LYNNFIELD — Lynnfield field hockey took on Lexington in their last scrimmage match before the start of the regular season. The teams tied 1-1, with junior Chole Kustka scoring from a big ball from senior captain Julia Carbone for Lynnfield.
“This is our last scrimmage before we open up next Wednesday at home. It’s exciting; we got our time-out back this year since we didn’t have one last year, which is going to help the game a little bit,” said Lynnfield’s coach Samantha Pindara. “As far as the team goes, we graduated a lot of maturity last year. So, we’ve brought on a bunch of new players this year. We do have some really strong senior leaders coming back from last year’s team.”
The team has improved a lot, and it showed while they battled Lexington, according to Pindara. “I’m proud of the way they played today. We had a scrimmage against Natick this past Wednesday, and we learned lots of things that we needed to improve on. We worked on them yesterday, and we implemented a lot of them today. That is really all that I can ask for. Field hockey is very defensive in general, and it’s such low scoring, so our thing as a team is people know their place, but they also know how to work together,” said Pindara.
Lexington came out of halftime, raring to go, and the ball didn’t seem to leave Lynnfield’s side of the field. “In the third quarter, in particular, it seemed like they had a bit more control than we did, especially and definitely more than the first half. We just play our game to stay composed and play our game. We need to do what we’re supposed to do on defense and get the ball out of the 16. We need to stay nice and low as well as keep pressure on other teams to try and prevent them from doing what they want to do,” said Pindara. “They scored in the second half, and it was beautiful, and we acknowledge that it was a nice goal.”
“Our goalkeeper Charlotte Radulski was rock solid in the net today, and we anticipate that she’s going to be rock solid throughout all season. We are excited to have her back as a senior leader this year,” said Pindara. “This team is a good team; they’re composed. They’re not a team that gets rattled easily, which is good when it comes to the quick transitions from offense to defense.”
Maddi Filip can be reached at [email protected].
