Portsmouth girls lacrosse hands Bedford first loss of the season

PORTSMOUTH – Sage Bussiere started in goal as freshman and displayed a ton of promise for the Portsmouth High School girls lacrosse team’s inaugural Division I season that ended with a loss to Bedford in the championship game.

With that year under her belt, Bussiere is aiming to take her game to another level and she proved she’s on the right path during Wednesday night’s title-game rematch against the defending champions.

Bussiere and her defensive teammates frustrated Bedford for the majority of the night, as she finished with 10 saves to help Portsmouth hand the Bulldogs’ their first loss of the season via a 10-7 decision on Tom Daubney Field.

“She was just so on and she had such a phenomenal game; she was ready for every single set,” Portsmouth coach JoJo Curro said. “She just had it all (Wednesday). It was just that confidence and the confidence in the defense in front of her that they were going to slow down the shot and she was going to make the final stop. She just rose to the next level. I was very impressed.”

Bussiere held Bedford (7-1, No. 1 in the NHHSSports Coaches Poll) to one goal in the second quarter while Portsmouth (6-1, No. 2) scored four goals after a pair of Georgia Bouvier goals were sandwiched around tallies by Ginger Vinciguerra and Lily Paterson.

After disrupting Bedford’s flow in-and-out of the net, Bussiere closed out the third quarter in style by making back-to-back saves to preserve an 8-5 lead that grew to 10-5 after Morgan Ruhnke scored early in the fourth quarter.

“It was a huge confidence boost for our team and it showed how well we can play together. We played really good team defense and that won us this game,” Bussiere said. “I’m at my best when I’m just reacting and those two saves were just reaction saves and I knew it was a moment that we needed. We couldn’t let them get that momentum going into the fourth quarter.”

Bedford coach Christine Hodgdon was pleased with how her defense held the dynamic scoring duo of Ruhnke (four goals) and Annie Parker (two) in check, but the offense could never find its rhythm. Maddie Kiely led Bedford with three goals.

“We made some early mistakes and got a little deflated and we needed to be more aggressive off the ball or with the ball and play more cohesive in our attack sets,” Hodgdon said. “They went on that little run and it was difficult to come back from that.”

Besides Bussiere, the other thorn in the side for Bedford was Portsmouth sophomore defender Maddie Houghton. The transfer from Manchester Central was given the task of slowing down Bedford standout  Olivia Matthews, and she accomplished that by limiting Matthews to one goal.

“I was definitely nervous with that because (Matthews) is a great player, but I just wanted to listen to what my coaches were telling me and just worked my hardest to keep up with her because she’s fast,” Houghton said. “We’re all pretty young girls, this a young team, so we knew we had to step up, especially from the defense from last year. So far we’re doing pretty well.”

Curro realized early the tenacity Houghton brought to the field and when the question came of who to put on Matthews, who’ll be playing at James Madison University next year, Houghton was the answer.

“She had a job and she did it well; she took her job seriously,” Curro said. “We said she’s going to get the ball and you’ve just got to be there and make it as hard on her as possible and she really did. She’s not a player who says no to a challenge. She likes to step up to it.”