Principia senior Hazel Stewart, the St. Louis leader in game-winning goals, stood at the stroke spot with victory on the tip of her stick.
With the game tied late in the fourth quarter, the Panthers were awarded a stroke after the ball struck an Oakville defender standing in the goal crease. The automatic Stewart was a flick away from sending Principia to its first playoff win since 2001.
“She makes 99 percent of those,” Principia coach Todd Dillon said. “We even practiced them the other day.”
Oakville goalie Allyson Brown had a different ending in mind.
“As she was getting ready to wind up, I was getting my stick ready to hit it away.”
Brown made a spectacular diving save with her stick, then made another stellar, stick save in overtime to keep the game tied heading to a second overtime, but Stewart refused to be denied.
“After I missed that stroke, it would have been easy for me to think, ‘Oh, no. Now we’re going to lose and this will be my last game,’ but instead, I wanted to fight harder to get the next goal,” Stewart said.
Stewart scored the game-winning goal midway through the second overtime to send Principia to the Sweet 16 with a 3-2 victory over Oakville during the first round of the 2026 Missouri State Field Hockey Tournament Wednesday at Principia.
No. 15 Principia (13-4-1), which restarted its field hockey program this year after a 25-year absence, advanced to play No. 2 MICDS (15-3-1) at 9 a.m. Saturday at MICDS.
It’s such a big deal to win a game in the playoffs and to be going to the Sweet 16. That means so much to me,” said Stewart, the lone senior.
Stewart’s stroke attempt occurred with three minutes remaining in regulation and the game tied at 2. The Principia captain lined it up and executed the shot exactly the way she wanted.
But Brown, who faced several strokes during the season, was aware of where players were scoring on her and had worked tirelessly to get there.
“Most of the strokes I’ve faced this season have gone in. I realized my weak spot was the top right corner because my stick is smaller than (the gear) on my other side, so I’ve been really working on making sure I could get to one in that top right corner,” Brown said.
She twirled her stick and arranged it the way she wanted, then dove to her right and knocked Stewart’s shot away.
“Allie the Acrobat,” Oakville coach Jackie Neely said. “To stop a stroke from Hazel. That was unreal.”
Brown stopped another sure goal in overtime when a pass from Stewart was received at the far post by sophomore Saanvi Javiya, but the stick of Brown flew into the picture at the last moment to keep the shot from entering the net.
“You just have to tip your cap to the goalie. We just couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net because their goalie was amazing,” Dillon said.
But in the second overtime, Stewart carried the ball into the circle and fired a shot on the run that snuck inside the far post to send Principia to the next round.
Stewart played her first three seasons at Whitfield, where the team went 13-24-2 and did not win a playoff game. She played mostly on defense and scored six goals in three years.
At Principia, Dillon saw she had the instincts to become a scoring threat.
“I saw the way she shot and stickhandled and found a way to get her more involved. She now plays a defensive midfield position, and we open the center of the field for her to go circle-to-circle,” Dillon said.
Stewart opened the scoring by accepting a pass from Javiya, driving right and firing a shot that deflected off an Oakville stick and parachuted into the cage for her 17th goal of the season.
Oakville (7-8) had its own superstar scorer who excelled in clutch moments.
During a four-game winning streak from Sept. 28-Oct 7, Oakville senior Olivia Romano scored the game-winning goal in all four, one-goal victories. She tied the game at 1 early in the second quarter on an unsavable blast from the right side of the goal.
In the closing seconds of the half, junior Scarlett Gordon blasted home a rebound off a shot from Stewart to give Principia a 2-1 lead, but Oakville senior Tessa Lillard tied it up again, 2-2, with a slick move around defenders late in the third.
The stroke save sent the game to overtime where Principia peppered the Oakville cage, but Brown would not allow the ball to enter.
“I thought, ‘I’ve done this before.’ I was really motivated by my teammates, especially after that stroke, and I wanted to keep it going,” Brown said.
But ultimately, the game-winning prowess of Stewart proved too much, as she drained her ninth game-winner of the season to tie her with Villa Duchesne senior Hannah Ponciroli for the area lead in that category.
“That just shows, that when it comes down to it, she finds a way to score when we need it,” Dillon said.
For Dillon, the play and leadership of Stewart has placed Principia in a place uncommon for startup programs.
“She’s on the Mount Rushmore of kids I’ve ever coached. She is sideline-to-sideline, endline-to-endline, a motor that doesn’t stop,” Dillon said. “And she is the most selfless teammate you will ever see. It’s always positive, positive, positive. Lift everyone else up.”
And among her most important traits Wednesday was her ability to recover from a missed, go-ahead stroke to eventually find the game-winner.
“That’s something I’ve worked on the past few years, finding the confidence to move on to the next play and knowing that I can do it, and that’s helped me a lot,” Stewart said.
Dillon added, “I couldn’t be prouder of Hazel. She willed that victory.”
For a photo gallery from this game, click on the link below:
https://benvessa.smugmug.com/Field-Hockey/2026-Season/Oakville-at-Principia-1st-round-10-21-26