Erskine Academy’s Mackenzie Toner made the move from forward to goalie, and the Eagles had their best season in several years. (Photo courtesy Mackenzie Toner)

SOUTH CHINA — As the leaves turn and October turns to November, we usually scribble stories and snap photos of playoff victories, trophy presentations and all-star berths.

This is not one of those stories. But it’s a success story nonetheless.

Recent years have not been kind to Erskine Academy’s field hockey team. One win in 2019. The coronavirus pandemic wiped out 2020. One win in 2021. As 2022’s training camp began this summer, the freshman-laden Eagles were without a goaltender thanks to graduations and departures.

“We were in a pickle,” Erskine coach Shara MacDonald said.

Enter senior Mackenzie Toner, one of Erskine’s reliable forwards the last three years.

Always up for a challenge — she’s also a catcher on the softball team, umpires softball games, babysits and plans to declare a double major at Thomas College next year — Toner volunteered to don the helmet and pads and guard the cage.

“I was like, ‘you know, I’ll just give it a shot, because if we need somebody, we need somebody,’ so I decided to do it,”  Toner said Friday from MacDonald’s classroom at Erskine, where her coach also is a health teacher.

Changing positions is difficult in any sport, but is a major challenge in field hockey, what with the heavy equipment that’s uncomfortable at any time of year, but especially during the sweltering summer heat of preseason and early season games. That Toner was used to wearing bulky catchers’ gear in softball made the transition a little easier.

There was also addition by subtraction: Any plusses Toner gave on defense could diminish the offense. But a preseason win at Thomas gave MacDonald the confidence to push ahead. “It progressed into something I should have seen as natural to begin with, but never thought of it,” the coach said.

On top of the position change, Toner was battling a stress fracture in her left foot during the preseason and was wearing a boot when she wasn’t playing.

Her foot mostly recovered, Toner received a baptism by fire in her first regular-season game, an 8-1 loss to perpetual powerhouse Cony on the Rams’ new turf surface at Fuller Field. (As bad as the score sounds, Erskine lost to Cony 19-0 a year earlier.) “It was messy, but we didn’t give up,” Toner said.

After a 4-1 loss to Oceanside sent the Eagles to 0-2, they earned two wins and a tie in their next three games before they dropped six of their next seven to fall out of playoff contention. Toner stayed in goal throughout and directed a defense of Lilly Clark, Parker Minzy, Andra Cowing and Belle Pilote that meshed as a unit. But she admitted there were times she was tempted to shed the gear, grab a stick and join her teammates on offense.

“There were games when we did great offensively,” Toner said, “and there were games when we just couldn’t get the ball into the goal, but we were down there most of the game, and those were the kind of moments when I wish I were down there, because I had a lot more experience. To not be able to do that for the team was really hard, but I feel like in goal as the season  went on, I was able to gain a lot more confidence, especially working with my defense more.”

One game remained, a senior night home date with Maranacook on Oct. 13. Toner made 11 saves, including a penalty stroke early in the game. With Erskine down 1-0, Bryanna Barrett tied the game with 1:17 left in regulation and Reese Sullivan scored with 2:15 remaining in overtime to give the Eagles a dramatic 2-1 win and a final record of 4-9-1, their best in several years.

There was no championship, but you couldn’t tell from the post-game reaction.

“You’d have thought we had won a Gold Ball,” MacDonald said. “People we crying, laughing hugging … it was great. It had a lot of meaning to it.”

Toner, who described the season as “the best year, as a team, for all four that I’ve been here,” finished with 164 saves, an average of 11.7 per game, including more than 20 in games against Lawrence, Mount View and Gardiner.

“The girl would do anything for her team,” MacDonald said. “It was a very selfless act to take that goalie spot as a senior when she could have had her fourth year of shooting on goal and take that position knowing there’s going to be some tough losses and there’s going to be some victories.”

Next school year, Toner will be catching softballs at Thomas while handling a double major in digital marketing management in business. But if the field hockey team is ever in a pinch …

“I may get the opportunity to play field hockey,” Toner said with a smile. “It’s still in the works. We’ll see.”