St. Kilian’s Minor U14 girls opened their school’s campaign with a visit from Rob Abbott’s Mount Temple Minor’s on Tuesday 17th, 2022. Like many schools and clubs at this age group the Covid break reduced playing numbers significantly, so this was a brand new team featuring several 1st years new to hockey in 2022.
Mount Temple are a solid medium-sized hockey school in the Clontarf area with a large catchment area and several girls were no stranger to our team through weekend club hockey connections – Clontarf HC and Pembroke Wanderers in particular.
Mt. Temple took an early lead through some unforced defensive fragility and quickly took a stranglehold on the game in the first half – running up a 3-0 halftime lead before St.Kilian’s asserted some kind of balance and started putting real pressure on the MT circle. The goal came from a period of sustained pressure allied to quick thinking from mobile striker Hannah Doyle-Wahl, one of our stronger 2nd years. Hannah’s goal was a nice landmark, as the first girls’ goal of the St. Kilian’s 2022/23 campaign. Well done Hannah!
Unfortunately, the goal proved to be the highlight of the match for the home team who had to endure the backlash from the invigorated Mount Temple XI who ran in a couple more goals for a convincing away victory. Despite the result we saw very strong performances from midfield enforcers Lily Little and Evelynn Spicer, a burgeoning creative spark from Ariana Gonzalez, and confident performances from Freya Niklas, Issy Horrigan, Clara Rohling, Lily Duff, Connie Crawley, Eve Sanatjou, and Maud Fahey – several of whom are very new to hockey. A particular highlight of this match for the coaching team was the interoperability of the goalkeeping team – Ella Lohan and Lily Bosak – with Lily putting in an incredible shift at the centre of defence after a 1st half minding the net.
While the girls were soundly beaten let’s not forget that Mount Temple self-registered into a lower league this season (intel acquired on the side-line post-game!!) after many years playing above us in the Minor Premier division – and as the picture shows, our girls are loving hockey, and the energy levels are high. Roll on game #2.
Dave Broderick
Hockey Coach
