Under siege for most of the second half and first overtime session, the Oxford Hills junior keeper stopped 15 of the 16 shots she faced — including a penalty stroke — while Mt. Blue sophomore Erika MacArthur matched her in limited activity as the teams battled to a 1-1 tie in a KVAC showdown at the Gouin Athletic Complex in Paris on Tuesday.

“(Huff) got convinced to play goalie at the end of last year,” Oxford Hills coach Cindy Goddard said.

“Our goalie last year had been our varsity goalie for four years,” assistant coach Hayly Holman added. “We wanted to make sure we had someone athletic and willing in the cage, and she stepped up. She worked a lot, too, in the offseason.”

While not as busy on the other end, MacArthur was every bit as equal to the task. The sophomore stopped six shots in regulation and three more in the second overtime period to preserve the tie.

“She’s just a sophomore,” Mt. Blue coach Jody Harmon said. “She’s done very well, too.”

Despite the solid game all around from the Cougars (2-3-1), they found themselves on the ropes late in the game. They dominated the second stanza, peppering Huff with eight shots on goal, and several more that went wide, thanks to 11 penalty corner chances.

“We just have to find a way to finish it,” Harmon said. “That’s our nemesis, that’s something we have to get around somehow. We have to figure that out. It’s crazy. Sometimes I think it’s just more of a mental thing, it gets into their minds too much instead of just focusing on that ball and just focusing to get it in the cage.”

The Oxford Hills defense, and Huff, stayed strong when it mattered.

“We took a timeout at the eight-minute mark and told them to be smart,” Goddard said. “Be smart about where we’re going with the ball.”

With 3:36 to play, this time without the benefit of a penalty corner, Hannah Minns broke free on the right side of the circle and blasted a laser to the lower left corner, past a diving Huff, to knot the game at one.

“I was hoping that the momentum would keep going and we’d find a way to score another goal, and then another one and another one,” Harmon said.

The Vikings (3-2-1) had scored late in the first half, against the flow of the game action. After seven consecutive failed penalty corners for Mt. Blue, Oxford Hills rushed in the other direction, and Bailey Wood finished for a 1-0 advantage.

The Cougars had a golden chance to even the score at 20:09 of the second half when Hannah LeClair stepped to the stroke line after Huff covered the ball in the circle on a scramble. Huff stared her down, and deflected LeClair’s offer to the left side of the cage with her glove hand.

In the first overtime, neither team really held an advantage. Mt. Blue had the only shot and the only penalty corner. But in the second session of OT, the Vikings came alive.

“They seemed a bit slower, maybe we had more energy,” Goddard said. “They seemed like they dominated a lot of the game, and I figured if they were that strong at full strength, we were in trouble seven versus seven.”

“We said it was guts, it’s all about guts,” Holman said. “We told them it was all about guts.”

Oxford Hills applied near constant pressure in the final four minutes, but went away empty.

“When it gets down to seven-on-seven, if you get it down into the circle, you get a huge advantage,” Harmon said. “Luckily, they didn’t score.”