Bears advance with 3-2 OT win

A little over a week ago, the Bangor field hockey team visited Pleasant Valley and went home a 3-2 loser.

On Thursday afternoon, three of the Bears, Felicia Domenici, Allison Heckman and Alenna Liptak, who were instrumental in that win, did the Slaters in once again.

This time, the Bears won by the same 3-2 score, but needed overtime to do it in a District 11 Class 3A first round battle at PV High Stadium.

Heckman scored the game-winner with 11:42 left in the first overtime on a corner off of a Domenici assist to lift the Bears into Thursday's quarterfinal round at No. 1 Emmaus at 3:30 p.m.

"We started off a little slow and had a lot of possessions, but we didn't score the goal, didn't score the goal, didn't score the goal," quipped Pleasant Valley head coach Bob Young afterwards. "We also gave away a lot of corners and eventually they scored from one."

Bangor took a 1-0 lead with 14:08 left in the first half when Karly Kosek banged a penalty shot into the left high side of the crease.

The Bears failed to score in the first half, but didn't take long to tie things up after intermission.

Liptak scored on a breakaway and Domenici assisted to make it 1-1 with just under four minutes gone in the second session.

Just less than two minutes later Domenici scored a goal herself with Jessica Sanbeg assisting to push the home team in front 2-1.

With 8:04 remaining Bangor's Abigail Bakke slammed in what looked like it was the tying goal, but it was disallowed by "third party" obstruction.

The Slaters did manage to punch in the tying goal with 4:48 remaining when Emily Howell scored on a corner off of a Bakke assist setting up the overtime session.

"We didn't panic and had the ball enough in their circle to do something and we came back in the second half and got a couple goals to get us ahead," said Young. "We cruised easily then right until the end when they put a lot of pressure on, got a lot more corners and we let one in so it went in to overtime."

In the OT, the Bears took charge right from the get-go.

"We've played a lot of overtime and we did play very well, I must say." The Bears finished with a 15-12 edge in shots on goal and a 13-12 advantage in penalty corners. PV goalie Jordan Borger ended up with 10 saves, while Bangor keeper Rachel Hosterman also had 10 saves.

Now the Bears must prepare for a real stiff test on Thursday against the Hornets.

"They're always interesting to play and never usually pleasant," said Young. "They're ranked No. 1 in the state so it will be a great experience for us. You never know. Strange things can happen in any game. We're optimistic and we're going to go and learn a whole bunch of new stuff there."