BEVERLY — Coming into the fourth quarter of a tie game for the first time all afternoon required Olivia Tsoukalas to be focused, gritty and devoid of nerves.
Tsoukalas not only accomplished that task … she also did her Masconomet field hockey team one better.
Replacing injured teammate Genevieve Clapp in an intense battle with undefeated Beverly, Tsoukalas scored the game-winning goal with 5:40 to play to give the Chieftains a 2-1 victory in a Northeastern Conference battle at Forti Field.
“Jumping into the lineup like Olivia today, that can’t be easy,” teammate Mia Juliano, a team captain, said. “Watching from the sidelines like that and all of sudden being told you’re going in, that can be difficult. But she was great.”
The tally, Tsoukalas’s second of the season, came as a result of a corner. The Chieftains worked the ball over to sophomore Mia Marques (2 assists), who found Tsoukalas out front. The junior’s shot went off the blocker of Beverly goalie Charlotte Stevens (3 saves) and clanged off the back wall of the Panthers’ cage.
“She was thrown out there, for lack of a better term, stepped up and took charge,” Masconomet (6-1) head coach Liz Dean said of Tsoukalas. “That’s so great to see.”
The victory put Masconomet alone in first place in league play at 6-0. Beverly dropped to 5-1 in NEC play and 6-1 overall.
“It’s a game we can learn from,” said Beverly’s first-year head coach Danielle Hartford. “We could’ve, and should’ve, played so much better. But like I told the girls afterwards, we get a chance to play them again at their place (Oct. 23 in Boxford).”
Sabrina Cararelli made five saves to earn the win in net for Chieftains. Her best stop was denying Beverly sharpshooter Morgan Linskey, denying her near-post bid with a quick let stop.
Charlotte Stevens also came up with a huge save of her own, turning away Juliano by kicking out her left leg to deny the bid.
But Juliano gave her team a 1-0 lead in the third quarter when she connected on a pass from Marques and hammered it home through traffic.
“I texted our team (Monday) night and said, ‘We’re just as intimidated by them as they are of us’. We knew they were for real,” Juliano, whose first college choice would be UNH to study psychology, said. “But we’ve really been working hard for this game and were dialed in. We showed that we really wanted this one.”
Beverly, which had scored 31 goals in its first six games, responded before the third quarter was out. Off a corner, freshman Avery LeBlanc inserted the ball into play, then got it back from Michelle Pichardo-Cedilo at the far post and put it home to tie the contest.
“Avery not only scored our goal, but defensively she probably prevented about five more goals going in for them,” said Hartford. “She’s outstanding.”
It stayed that way until Tsoukalas’s tiebreaking tally in the fourth quarter.
Defenders Emma Campagna and Hannah Mitchell both had terrific games for Masconomet, working in tandem and communicating well on the left side. Linskey also shined for the host Panthers.
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