Okehampton Hockey Ladies 1st XI 2-1 Caradon

OKEHAMPTON Ladies 1st XI were hoping to keep their winning momentum going after a convincing win against Bodmin, however, with training cancelled due to a frozen pitch and last week's game called off because of Storm Bert, preparations to take on the challenging Caradon were not ideal.

They were then slightly thrown before the match even started with Caradon warming up on "our side of the pitch"... some of the Okehampton ladies are a little superstitious!

With the first whistle setting them off, however, they applied pressure to the opposition straight away. They controlled the first quarter of the game, closing down any attacking attempts with good communication from Jane Jones and Kay Peerless in the centre.

Quick passes through from the midfield players of Eleanor Pearce and Joey Drake, enabled forwards Erin Godwin and Iris Leslie to take some great shots on goal... but nothing quite made it beyond the line.

There was a shift in momentum in the second quarter where Caradon made a strong attack, and after an intense back-and-forth in the D, they scored the first goal of the match.

Okehampton were undeterred and continued to build the pressure until Anna Speak passed across the goalkeeper to Captain Hannah Whiteley, who calmly pushed the ball into the bottom right corner. The score was 1-1 going into halftime.

Player of the Match Ali Newton took charge of her wing in the second half, filtering through the Caradon players to deliver ball after ball towards our goal. Rewarded with a penalty corner, after a Caradon foul in the D, Rachel Mercer's accurate pass across to Hannah landed the hosts a second goal.

Caradon didn’t back down but were unable to strike back and so fell to defeat, with Laura Bazeley making some fantastic saves to secure the win for Okehampton.