By Matt Bishop –
Taylor — Brooke Schembri scored twice in the span of 130 seconds in the first period to lead Honeybaked to a 4-2 win over Victory Honda to capture the MAHA 12U Girls AAA Tier I state championship at Taylor Sportsplex.
Schembri’s two goals earned her MVP honors.
“She played outstanding today,” Honeybaked coach Danny Veri said. “She’s got great hands, she’s got great touch. She’s a finisher. She had a great game today.”
The win capped an outstanding tournament for Honeybaked, which went 5-0 over the course of the six-day tournament.
“We had a lot of girls who were here last year, so they had a little experience behind them,” Veri said. “I thought we played hard. The first 20 minutes of the game we did really well.”
The game was not without drama early. Less than four minutes in, a Victory Honda shot from the point clanked off the junction of the post and crossbar. On the ensuing rush, Honeybaked’s Grace Middleton made Victory Honda pay for not capitalizing on the opportunity, giving her team a 1-0 lead. Michelle Cirino and Melanie Anderson assisted.
“The funny thing is, as long as I’ve been doing this, whenever things like that happen, either for us or against us, I always see it as a sign of how the game’s going to go,” Veri said. “Thank God that was them hitting it and not us because then I would’ve been thinking, ‘It’s not gonna go our way today.’ I think it helped that we came right back down after that because they were pressing hard.”
“Some days you get bounces, some days you don’t,” Victory Honda coach Mike Kaput said. “That’s just the way it rolls.”
Just more than six minutes later, Schembri took over the game.
Coming in from the left side on a 2-on-1, the defenseman cut off the pass opportunity and Schembri got in too deep. But she never gave up on the play and somehow, in tight quarters, deked around the goaltender and put it in the back of the net. Ashley Awdish picked up the lone assist.
“She’s a very good hockey player,” Kaput said. “She’s fun to watch.”
Down two goals, Victory Honda responded less than a minute later when Megan Roe took a pass from Hannah Bates and scored. Julianna Morano also picked up an assist.
But at 12:34, Schembri struck again, beating the defenseman at the blue line and sending a seeing-eye shot from the top of the circle that beat Victory Honda goaltender Olivia Mikesell, regaining her team’s two goal lead and putting Honeybaked up 3-1.
Honeybaked would take a 4-1 lead in the opening minutes of the second period on a goal by Emma Tamer. Michelle Cirino chipped a pass that made its way through ton of traffic and landed right on the tape of Tamer’s stick. She had a wide-open net and did not miss. Emily Curlett also assisted.
From there, Victory Honda gained momentum as the second period neared its conclusion, putting Honeybaked on its heels for the last few minutes of the stanza.
“Even when it was a three-goal lead with 35 minutes to go, I was telling them there was a lot of game left,” Veri said. “We had to keep our foot on the gas and don’t let it up. I said it was a long way from over. They heard it all game long from me.”
Victory Honda would cut the lead back down to two about midway through the third period when, on the power play, Roe struck again. She made a great move to knife through the defense inside the blue line, kept the defense off of her and roofed the puck over the sliding goaltender. Morano picked up her second helper of the day on the goal.
Honeybaked, though, was able to hold off Victory Honda the rest of the way.
Lauren Rippy made 16 saves for Honeybaked while Mikesell stopped 18 for Victory Honda.