Judge hat trick lifts Cape over Woodbridge

The Cape Henlopen field hockey team made Woodbridge goalie Kaitlin Blades work hard for her team, as the Lady Vikings peppered her with 61 shots on their way to a 8-1 victory over the winless Henlopen South team.

Sophomore Kat Judge had the best game of her young career, scoring three goals at 24:18, 17:15 and 11:57 of the first half.

"I was able to get two scores from the top of the circle and one was off a rebound shot by Jacki [Coveleski]," said Judge. "It was pretty exciting."

Other first-half scores came on an unassisted goal from Coveleski; Kelly Smith, with a helper from Erin Ricker and an unassisted goal from Sara Young. The Vikings took the 6-1 lead into the intermission.

The second half also went Cape's way as Anna Frederick took a pass from Smith and flipped it into the goal from the corner. The final Viking tally came from the stick of Leah Smyk with an assist from Maggie Delp.

"Woodbridge really packed the circle with players," said Smyk. "It made it a little harder to pick up the rebounds off the goalie's pads."

"The whole team got to play some quality time," said Delp. "I'm happy getting an assist on Leah's shot."

"We were able to mix it up and move some players around," said Cape coach Nicole Hughes. "It'll pay off later on in the season when we need to get breaks for players."

Cape took 21 penalty corners to the Raiders' one.

The Vikings outshot the Blue Raiders 61-2, but Kaitlin Slater made one of the shots pay off as she scored the lone Woodbridge goal at 21:25 of the first half.

"We still need to work on our double teams and capitalizing on getting shots off of rebounds from the goalie's pads," said Hughes.

Blades stopped 27 Vikings shots while Cape's Maddie Meade had one save in her half [second] of play.