“It was a take from the top of the circle, and I’m a forward, so I technically shouldn’t have taken it, but I was feeling really confident in my air dribble right then, and I just had so much adrenaline going, so I just air-dribbled it in,” Walker said. “It hit off the other person’s foot, so I’m really happy they didn’t call that, and I just put it in.”

No big deal, as far as Gardiner coach Sharon Gallant is concerned.

“If they have the open shot, they have the green light no matter what,” she said. “If you’ve got it, then go. We don’t get points for running the play, we get points for putting it in.”

Thursday’s victory keeps the Tigers’ (8-0) unbeaten season intact, but they needed a goal deep into the second half just to send the game into overtime.

The first half was scoreless, and Leavitt went the entire 30 minutes without a shot on goal.

However, the Hornets’ only shot of the game resulted in a goal. Early in the second half, a cross by Kaitlyn Leclerc found Allie Belaire wide open and all alone in front of the goal for a tip in.

Despite Gardiner’s control of the game up that point, Leavitt suddenly held a 1-0 lead with 24:19 remaining in the game.

The Hornets were a different team after halftime. Coach Wanda Ward-MacLean said that before the break, their inexperience showed in a few different ways.

“We started going to the ball, playing more aggressively,” Ward-MacLean said. “In the first half, we played a little panicky, so instead of controlling the ball we’d just swat at it. I makes a huge difference.”

Gallant hoped falling behind would light a fire under the Tigers. It took something else, though.

Sixteen minutes after Leavitt’s goal, Hailee Lovely put a shot over Hornets goalie Hailey DeMascio’s head on a penalty corner. The only problem was that the ball did not leave the shooting circle, the officials said, so the score was revoked.

It was a close call. Gallant said she couldn’t tell from the sideline, but that she completely trusts the two officials in charge of Thursday’s game. The Gardiner players, though, felt shortchanged. That got the fire burning.

A minute later, Lovely got another chance on another penalty corner, and she lofted another Lovely aerial over DeMascio’s head.

“Haley does a nice job back there,” Ward-MacLean said. “She stops pretty much everything that comes in. That aerial over her head, I mean, that’s just a beautiful shot. It was perfectly placed.”

With seven minutes remaining, the Tigers were even with the Hornets.

“Finally, after the first goal got called back, then all of a sudden they were all mad,” Gallant said. “And then we put one in relatively soon after that. So, I said to them, ‘Do you have to be mad to play well? What is it?’”

Neither team budged the remainder of regulation, so the match went to overtime. A little more than three minutes into the extra period, Walker scored the game-winner, and the Tigers earned some important Heel Points.

“In overtime, we realized, ‘Wow, this is it; like, we need this win,” Walker said. “And I know we’re worth a lot of points and they’re worth a lot of points, and I’m just really proud of my team and the way we worked together at the end.

“It was a really tight game and really nerve-wracking for everyone.”

Ward-MacLean was satisfied with how the Hornets (5-3) bounced back from a 3-1 loss to Winslow on Tuesday.

“I thought it was pretty evenly matched,” she said. “They were undefeated and we had had a couple of losses, but … I thought we played pretty well today; much better than we did on Tuesday.

“You know, it could have gone either way. They had a lot of opportunities in the first half, and the second half I thought it was pretty evenly matched. And then, overtime, it is what it is.”