By Paul Vozzella
Hometown Weekly Sports Reporter
May is well underway. The flowers are blooming. The birds are chirping. The weather is heating up, and so are the Wolverines. Westwood took to the road on Friday evening, defeating Hopkinton 11-8 to mark its seventh consecutive win and advance to 12-4 on the season.
Although the final score was in Westwood’s favor, a cold start forced them to mount a comeback early. Hopkinton won the opening faceoff and scored within the first minute of the game. Shortly after, junior Jaden Pollack made a save in net but could not possess the ball before it bounced back to the opposition for a score.
For a quick glimpse, Westwood seemed to get back on track with goals from seniors Jack Roycroft and Dante Martucci but Hopkinton ripped off four consecutive goals before ending the first quarter with a 6-2 lead.
“We just had to refocus ourselves,” head coach Todd Zahurak said on what changed following the first quarter. “Once we refocused, we did a nice job on them for the rest of the way.”
The start of the second frame proved to be promising for the Wolverines. After a lengthy offensive possession, Westwood gained a one-man advantage from a Hopkinton penalty. 36 seconds into the advantage, Martucci made a bid for ESPN’s "Top 10" plays, cutting across the middle of the offensive zone and shooting behind his head for a goal.
Later on in the quarter, sophomore Greg Walsh capitalized by scoring with three seconds remaining in another one-man advantage. Before the goal, sophomore William Stuehler made a tremendous effort by chasing a shot against two opponents and fully extending on a dive over the out-of-bounds line to retain possession.
Senior Troy Fredrickson also scored a goal in the second quarter on a bounce shot that barely snuck by the lower right side of the goalkeeper. Pollack made an impressive save with seconds remaining to cap off a shutout quarter for Westwood.
Heading into the back half with a 6-5 deficit, Westwood went back-and-forth with Hopkinton for the first six minutes before the Hillers netted a goal to extend their lead. Not even a minute later, sophomore Christopher Hancock made a great pass to junior Sam Cochran for a goal.
Roycroft and Walsh scored again to get Westwood’s first lead of the game at 8-7 before the end of the third quarter.
The Wolverines would never trail again as Cochran found the back of the net twice more to round out a hat trick and junior Liam Williams scored his team’s final goal of the game to put the dagger into Hopkinton.
Westwood now heads back home for its season finale versus Holliston on Senior Night with a chance to extend its win streak to eight games and secure a top-ten seed in the Division II playoffs.
