LeClerc netted the game’s lone goal and Ryan stopped 10 shots — three of them on hard-hit risers in the final 10 minutes of play — to lift Spruce Mountain over Leavitt 1-0, avenging a late-season, home-field loss to the Hornets last season.

“I just had flashbacks of last year’s game, when we scored first, and I just did not want to see a loss on our home field again,” LeClerc said. “That killed me. And going into senior year, I definitely wanted to pull out the win. As a team, we pulled off the win.”

“This is really exciting for us. It’s a big game,” Spruce Mountain teammate Emily Hogan said. “We’re so glad we pulled through and got the win.”

The win moved the Phoenix (9-4) past the Hornets (8-5) in the Class B South standings, but both teams are facing an uphill battle to a home playoff game thanks to a tough-as-nails KVAC schedule that saw many of the teams beat up on one another as the season went along.

“It’s fun, it makes it fun, but it’s nerve-wracking,” Spruce Mountain co-coach Jane DiPompo said.

“It makes you playoff-ready, that’s for sure,” Leavitt coach Wanda Ward-McLean said.

The loss may mean a preliminary game for the perennial playoff contenders.

After the Phoenix scored with 15:28 to play in the second half, Leavitt tried to regroup on its own. Ultimately, Ward-McLean called a timeout to settle her players.

“Timeouts are huge,” DiPompo said. “You use your timeouts to strategize, and to energize. We did it, and they did it. It was just exciting.”

Exciting to watch, perhaps, but not so exciting if you’re Ryan, who bore the brunt of Leavitt’s re-energized front line shortly after the Hornets’ timeout.

“I was just trying to look all around everyone and find the ball,” Ryan said. “When you can’t see it, scream at them, they’ll move. If they don’t move, they get shoved.”

Ryan swatted a pair of high shots with her left-hand glove, and reached to stop another with the paddle of her stick as Leavitt reeled off four consecutive penalty corner tries.

“I was getting nervous after they kept having corner after corner after corner,” Spruce Mountain co-coach Julia Parker said. “But they played well. The girls commented themselves, they all played defense as a team, so that really helped them.”

“We couldn’t stop a pass in, or when we did, when we had a shot or a pass, no one was getting their stick on the ball,” Ward-McLean said. “Like I told the kids, we hurt ourselves as much as anybody else by making mistakes without pressure.”

The teams combined for 21 penalty corners in the game, but only LeClerc made one count midway through the second half, though it didn’t exactly go as planned.

“Not at all,” LeClerc laughed.

“Sort of,” DiPompo said. “You have to go with what they throw at you, who’s rushing, who’s staying back, who’s double-teamed and who’s open. We draw them up, but it often doesn’t work that way.”

“I just saw the ball coming, I put my stick down, it rolled right in front of me and I just shot it,” LeClerc said. “I looked for the goalie, and the goalie was right there in front of me, so I went to the left corner, and boom, it just went in.”

Ryan stood her ground after that to preserve the victory.

“She’s so solid,” DiPompo, who works with the team’s goalies, said of Ryan.

“Jane works her hard,” Parker added.

“But it’s all her, she works hard,” DiPompo interjected. “She’s just a tremendous athlete.”

Spruce Mountain finishes the season against Lawrence, while the Hornets face Oceanside in their finale. Both games are scheduled for Tuesday.