Murphy leads CdM to win

NEWPORT BEACH — Corona del Mar High goalie Kate Murphy said facing a five-meter penalty shot is more about mind games than anything else.

Maybe the Sea Kings, then, have Murphy’s mind to thank for their 5-4 win over Back Bay rival Newport Harbor in the Holiday Cup championship game on Saturday.

Murphy, a senior, stopped three straight penalty shots for the Sea Kings, who won the tournament for the first time in school history. They also avenged a 6-5 loss to Newport Harbor on Dec. 21 and dethroned a Sailors team that had won the Holiday Cup the previous two years.

“We practice penalty shots at the end of practice, we’ll do them for about 10 minutes,” said Murphy, who made seven saves overall. “All three shots went to my right. I think they were kind of playing mind games. I just went on my instincts.”

Instinct also served teammate Heather Van Hiel well. Van Hiel, a sophomore, found senior Katie Indvik on the weak side midway through the fourth quarter. Indvik skipped in a shot cross-cage with 3:21 left, giving the Sea Kings a 5-4 lead that would prove to hold up.

“We really wanted to get revenge on our Back Bay rivals,” Indvik said. “We really focused on defense this game and gave it our hearts the whole game. It was 100 percent intensity the whole time; we really wanted this.”

Corona del Mar (7-2) won the game despite going one for eight in power-play situations and giving up four penalty shot attempts, all of them drawn by Newport Harbor’s Sarah Roberts. But Murphy came up big each of the first three times, getting a block in each of the first three quarters.

CdM Coach Aaron Chaney said it was “huge” for Murphy to step up like that.

“After she blocked the second one, the girls were going crazy in the pool,” Chaney said. “They weren’t even counter-attacking; they were just yelling at her. And the third one was even more so.”

Newport Harbor (5-3) had beaten Foothill, 4-3, in Saturday morning’s semifinal, handing the Knights, the No. 1 team in CIF Southern Section Division I, their first loss of the season.

“That was really important for us,” said Sailors senior Marisa Cottam, who scored the game-winning goal late in the fourth quarter in the semifinal. “We lost to Foothill in our first game of the season, and we wanted to go out there and get them. We had a really good six-on-five; that’s how we scored all our goals.”

But in the championship game, the Sailors were continually playing from behind. Indvik and Van Hiel each scored in the first three minutes of the game — both on great passes from senior Haley Prickett — to stake the Sea Kings to a 2-0 lead.

“They were all fired up, because we beat them last week,” Cottam said. “We were a little tired from Foothill, but I thought it was a good game. We’ll meet them again, and hopefully that’ll be a good game.”

Chaney said that it didn’t matter if it was the 15th-place game or the championship game; his team really wanted to beat Newport Harbor after the previous loss.

CdM senior Leilani Livingston, who had two steals, agreed.

“It’s our rivalry,” she said. “We really wanted to just go for it. We were completely focused on this game. We put the first game in the past and just went for it.”

To the Sailors’ credit, they battled hard all game as well. Roberts scored a six-on-five goal with 4:06 left in the first quarter, then Cottam buried a long goal to make the score 3-2, CdM, with 2:14 left in the first.

It would stay that way until midway through the third quarter. After Murphy blocked her final penalty shot, CdM senior Sarah Hutchison scored with 4:01 left in the quarter, giving the Sea Kings a two-goal advantage.

But Newport Harbor senior Allyssa Peterson scored with one second left on the shot clock, then the Sailors finally scored on a five-meter penalty shot — taken by Roberts — to tie the game at four-all with 34 seconds left in the third.

“Coach [Bill Barnett] always says get your base position and work really hard,” said Roberts about playing set. “You power yourself into the girl and try to feel where she is behind you, and try to work from there.”

But Indvik’s goal was the only score of the fourth quarter, leaving CdM as the victors. The Sailors couldn’t get a shot off in their final two possessions.

After the game, Indvik gave all the credit to her goalie, Murphy.

“She’s our captain this week, and she brought so much intensity and effort,” Indvik said. “We’re so proud of her. She works her butt off every single day, so she really deserved to make all those blocks. It was incredible.”

CdM advanced to the championship game after beating Santa Margarita, 5-2, in the semifinal behind two goals from senior Cari Levine. She also had four steals in the championship win, while teammate Allison Peotter played good two-meter defense.

Newport senior Jillian Chiapuzio (three steals) and junior Jessica Robinson (an assist and two steals) also played well.

Foothill beat Santa Margarita, 9-1, in the third-place game.

Holiday Cup

Championship game

Corona del Mar 5, Newport Harbor 4

Score by Quarters

Newport 2 0 2 0 — 4 CdM 3 0 1 1 — 5

Newport -- Roberts 2, Cottam 1, Peterson 1. Saves -- Vickers 6.

CdM -- Indvik 2, Van Hiel 1, Hutchison 1, Prickett 1. Saves -- Murphy 7.