The Mt. Blue offense was resilient in the second half and the Cougars’ goalie, Addie Schanz, who was under siege most of the game, wouldn’t budge, making save after save. She made a total of 14 saves.

Despite Mt. Blue’s pressure in the second half, Edward Little (5-2-1) slipped away with a 2-1 victory.

“Efffort was OK,” EL coach Craig Latuscha said. “The attitude was pretty good today. Team play was a lot better than it was against Hampden (Academy). If we could put the ball away on the chances we had throughout the game a little bit more, it maybe would have been a little bit different game.

“They scored that nice goal and made it really close at the end. If we can learn how to finish a little bit better overall as team, maybe it would be a totally different game.

“That goalie made some pretty big saves. She’s pretty tall. She made some good saves and kept them in the game.”

Mt. Blue (2-5-1) finally got on the board late in the second half and kept up the pressure right up to the end.

The Cougars’ Sierra Keim made it a close when she drilled her shot from about 15 yards out and scored unassisted with 13:11 left in the game.

From there, each team scrambled to score a goal, but both defenses and goalies never gave an inch.

The Red Eddies immediately began probing the Cougars’ defense in the first half thanks to a feed from Hammond

Grace Beaudet punched in EL’s first goal with 32:13 left in the first half without assistance.

Less than a minute later, Hammond followed Beaudet’s lead and scored on a Piper Norcross assist.

But the Cougars showed no signs of calling it a day and buckled down on defense while their offense went after the Red Eddies. Of course, Schanz’s eye-opening performance in net helped rally the Cougars

“She’s an amazing goalie,” Mt. Blue coach Fred Conlogue said. “She has had some big games for us, coming up with 20, 30 saves. She keeps us in every ball game, which is really, really important and the girls know that, and as a result of that, today we were able to play hard the whole game and actually get back in the game and a chance to win the game.

“They could have easily given up that third goal. They had us on the ropes. Addie came up big; the defense came up big. I was really proud of all of them because they didn’t stop playing. The girl (Keim) who punched in the goal had a really good game for us.

“We had a chance to tie it at the end. Craig’s kids play really hard. I am always impressed with his level of athleticism. He has some great athletes that are there. He can organize them to play really good soccer.”