UMaine field hockey wins America East regular season title
Nov. 1—The University of Maine's field hockey team captured the outright America East championship and earned the top seed for the six-team league tournament with Sunday's 4-2 win at New Hampshire.
The Black Bears will host the tournament, which begins on Thursday at the UMaine field hockey complex in Orono.
It is the fifth time UMaine has won or shared the regular season title, with the others coming in 2005, 2015, 2017 and 2020.
UMaine shared the title with Monmouth University (New Jersey) this past spring but Monmouth earned the top seed and the right to host the tourney because it won the regular season meeting between the two.
UMaine beat Monmouth 5-3 on Sept. 24.
Coach Josette Babineau's Black Bears, 7-1 in the conference and 13-6 overall, and second seed Monmouth University (6-2, 12-5) earned first-round byes.
On Friday at noon, UMaine will play the winner of Thursday's game between fourth seed University of California (5-3, 9-6) and No. 5 New Hampshire (3-5, 7-11). At 3 p.m. Monmouth will face the winner of the Thursday quarterfinal between No. 3 Albany (6-2, 9-8) and No. 6 Stanford (3-5, 4-7).
Stanford is the defending two-time champion and has won four of the last five America East tournaments.
Friday's winners will play in Sunday's 1 p.m. championship game and the winner will earn an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament.
UMaine has never won the America East tournament or qualified for the NCAA tournament.
The Black Bears will enter the tournament with 12 victories in their last 13 games after a 1-5 start with four of those losses coming in overtime to nationally ranked teams.
On Sunday in Durham, New Hampshire, the Black Bears jumped out to a 3-0 lead on first-half goals by Poppy Lambert, her team-leading 13th of the season, along with Boothbay Harbor's Sydney Meader (6th) and Chloe Walton (10th). The team survived early second-half goals by the Wildcats 2:35 apart by Molly McAteer (3rd) and Tia Raspante (4th) to register the win.
Hana Davis (8th) added an insurance goal with 57 seconds remaining. Old Town's Brooke Sulinski picked up two assists and Garland's Abby Webber had one.
UMaine attempted 33 shots to UNH's six and had 20 shots on goal to UNH's three.
UMaine had a 15-3 edge in penalty corners.
Mia Borley made one save for UMaine and Jemma Woods had 15 for UNH.
