Westminster goalie Lindsay Leese made Spider-Man look slow yesterday afternoon.
Leese had an exceptional 23 saves in the state field hockey semifinal, leading the Owls to a penalty-stroke shootout win over Montgomery County's Whitman following 80 minutes of scoreless play, including 20 minutes of overtime, at Goucher College.
Three of Leese's saves came on the four shots against her during the shootout, which Westminster won, 3-1. Junior midfielder Emily Bollinger, sophomore forward Megan Erb and junior defender Megan Zepp scored on Westminster's first three shootout attempts, and Leese stopped Whitman's first two.
After yielding one goal, Leese clinched the victory with a diving save to her right off a stroke by Becca Mondics.
"I was so confident going in the game, I knew I could do it," said Leese, a senior who had 48 saves for the rest of the season. "I had a lot of faith in myself. I knew my girls could pull it off, and I knew I could pull it off too."
Westminster (8-5-2) advanced to the Class 4A state championship game at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow and will face Broadneck, which defeated Frederick, 2-1, in yesterday's other 4A semifinal at Goucher.
Save records are not kept by the state field hockey committee, but Leese's 23 were thought by Phyllis Hemmes, the event's top official, to be among the most in a state tournament since the event began in 1975.
The Owls won but clearly were not the better team. Whitman (11-2), which had an 11-game winning streak snapped, outshot Westminster 28-1, had an 11-2 edge in penalty corners, hit goal posts twice and saw four shots cleared off the goal line, three by Zepp and one by senior defender Elyse Carloss.
"It was kind of routine after a while, because we got used to them coming down and taking a lot of shots," Zepp said.
In the second overtime, Whitman took three shots during a five-minute 7-on-6 man advantage after Zepp was issued a yellow card for swinging her stick at Vikings leading scorer Becky Weinstein. Leese saved all three.
"We were totally unlucky," said Whitman coach Mary Pat VeihMeyer, whose team lost to Westminster in a shootout for the second straight year. "They just wouldn't bounce in. You've got to score to win, and we did everything but."
Said Westminster coach Mary Beth Francis: "We are far, far better than we were today, so I feel it is fitting for us to win, even though we didn't dominate this game. We've lost games that we've dominated, as well."