MARLBOROUGH – With the Whitcomb Middle School scoreboard clock at 0:00, the Marlborough Panthers toed the striking circle as Keira Manning prepared to pass the ball. After an hour of back-and-forth action, a penalty in the final seconds gave Marlborough a corner and an opportunity for one final, untimed shot.
A shot Kacie Horn was determined to make.
Off the pass from Manning, Horn fired the ball into the back of the net to break a 2-2 tie against 19th-ranked Auburn. Her game-winning shot sent the 14th-ranked Panthers into the MIAA Division 3 Round of 16, where Marlborough awaits the winner of No. 3 Newburyport and No. 30 Triton Regional.
“I just picked a side and hit it as hard as I could. I really just had to focus,” said Horn. “As a team, our coaches call the right corner. We always call the right play. It was such a good feeling to make it – the best feeling. This team is so close. It was so good to have the win. We were all going crazy.”
Horn’s heroics finished a game that the Panthers commanded but never controlled. Despite spending nearly the entire contest on offense, Marlborough never had the lead. The Rockets pulled ahead first, but Marlborough’s Hailey DeVincent scored to bring the game to a 1-1 tie that would last deep into the fourth quarter.
The Rockets reached Marlborough’s circle only five times, but managed to pull ahead once more, making the game 2-1 with less than five minutes remaining. The Panthers fired shots at the Auburn defense all afternoon and dictated the game, but it was the Rockets – not the Panthers – that found themselves ahead.
Until Marlborough came out with a renewed sense of focus, that is. With the understanding that the status quo meant the end of the season, it took Marlborough all of 30 seconds to even the game. Off a feed from Horn, freshman Emerson Gaudette made the match 2-2.
“We never give up. We got scored on, and we immediately knew we had to get it back. We never settle. There’s five minutes left in the game – we had to use that five minutes to win,” Horn said. “We knew we had to keep scoring and, if we got scored on, we knew we had to come back 10 times harder.”
“They stayed up and knew what needed to be done. They didn’t take it as, ‘That’s it.’ They took it as, ‘There’s still a lot of time and opportunity.’ I think at one of our quarters we talked about how we had to keep playing our game, because it’s going to happen for us. We were taking shots. We were confident the whole game that we were going to find a way,” said Head Coach Michaella Mahoney.
Horn’s tie-breaking, last-second goal was made more satisfying because Marlborough had lost to Auburn 3-2 just three weeks ago. That game was similar to the playoff contest, Mahoney said. The Panthers felt like they had things under control, but, at the last second, Auburn grabbed the lead out from under them.
It also marked the second time this season Marlborough had earned a last-second penalty shot. Last time, Marlborough didn’t execute and settled for a tie. But in a do-or-die playoff game – and with the opportunity to exact revenge on an Auburn team they felt they outplayed – the Panthers didn’t miss.
“The last time we were in that position, we walked away with a tie,” said Mahoney.
“Nobody was walking away with a tie today. And we knew we were the stronger team.”
