Junior midfielder Nici Boutwell scored the final goal of her hat trick to win the Mavericks the game 13-12 in overtime.
Rockhurst University (RU) took a 10-9 lead with 6:12 left in the game, and they added another goal within 19 seconds of them taking the lead. The Mavericks junior attacker Kenzie Blackwell was determined to get her team back in the game scoring two of the final three goals in regulation to tie the game.
Blackwell scored her third goal of the game to bring Colorado Mesa University (CMU) within one goal. The Hawks answered with a goal of their own before freshman attacker Melanie Evans cut the lead back to one goal and Blackwell tied the game up with 58 seconds left in the second half.
The overtime period lasted one minute and 21 seconds before Boutwell threw multiple fakes before scoring over the head of Emily Duff.
“We are definitely on track to continue improving, and that’s all we want to do. We’re not thinking about the win, we’re not thinking about the championship right now,” CMU Head Coach Shanta Loecker said. “We have those end goals, but we just want to make sure that every day we are getting better, and I think this was a concrete day of improvement for us.”
With 65 fouls in the game, each team’s rhythm was disrupted and neither team was able to gain momentum efficiently.
CMU was led in scoring by freshman midfielder Lauren Wick with two goals and two assists. Wick caused two turnovers and won five draws in the game as she was making plays in all facets of the game.
“We just kept our game plan the same but played with our feet more, so noticing that they are calling those fouls, so not changing how our defense is playing just changing how we are playing with our sticks specifically,” Wick said. “If we know that they are going to call those fouls we don’t want to put ourselves in that situation where they have a free-position shot or just get a reset on the clock.”
Freshman attacker Brianna Anderson scored the first two goals of her CMU career as she scored the first two goals in the game. Wick assisted Anderson’s first goal of her career as both freshmen made a big impact on the game.
The first half saw three two-goal runs for CMU and two two-goal runs for RU. The Mavericks were three of eight on free-position shots scoring all three of their free-position goals in the first half.
Junior goaltender Lula Mitchell got into a rhythm early in the game picking up her first save five minutes into the game on a free position shot from Olivia Collier. Mitchell finished the game with 11 saves and played all 61 minutes of the contest.
“Fouls is a huge part of the way we play because we just play so high intensity,” Mitchell said. “So if there is a call on one of the girls particularly on defense, that is slowing down the play and it’s allowing us to get into our defense, so it’s moving on from whatever foul happened, understanding that it happened, and we need to grow from that, and we need to move on.”
CMU took a 6-4 lead at halftime behind the Hawks 16 turnovers. Sophomore attacker Maeve Hungerford scored the Mavericks final free-position goal of the game with eight seconds left in the first half.
The Maverick’s next game will be Tuesday, March 17 at 6 P.M. against Lewis University to start their Spring Break trip.
