Watertown, MA – In a Middlesex League crossover game, Belmont High School faced off tonight against their longtime rivals from Watertown High School.
Belmont came out of the gate strong, controlling most of the play in the first 5 minutes, but Watertown did a good job of keeping most of the shots to the outside and limiting Belmont’s scoring chances. The tides changed when Belmont took a couple of penalties and Watertown had a couple of scoring chances on the power play. Despite all this, the period ended in a 0-0 tie.
Both teams came out strong in the second period with a lot of back and forth play, but not many scoring chances. Both teams started getting chippy: penalties were called, but the game remained 0-0. Belmont’s Cam Fici would change that late in the period when he fired a puck from the bottom of the face-off circle beating the goalie five-hole to give Belmont the 1-0 lead.
Watertown came out in the third like a team that wanted to win the game. They carried most of the play and limited Belmont to only a couple of shots on net. With around seven minutes left in the period, the first line of Watertown had some great chances and zone time and tied the game when Anthony Venezia took a pass from Alec Banosian and blasted it by the Belmont goalie to tie it 1-1. A few minutes later Aidan Campbell roofed a puck over the outstretched goalie to put Watertown up 2-1.
With a minute left Belmont came off a time out with their goalie pulled and capitalized when Belmont’s Matty Rowan beat the Watertown goalie short side to tie the game 2-2. This was how the game stayed heading into overtime.
The overtime period proved to be an exciting one. Both teams had some chances and it was an exciting back and forth few minutes until Belmont’s Cam Fici wrapped around the net and beat the Watertown goalie for the game-winner. Final score 3-2 Belmont.
Three Stars:
1. F Cam Fici, Belmont
2. F Matty Rowan, Belmont
3. F Anthony Venezia, Watertown
