GRANBY — In what originally looked like a rebuilding year, the Northampton girls ultimate program showed it can compete at the highest level.

The Blue Devils reached the Amherst Invitational Gx division championship game for the first time Sunday, falling to Four Rivers 10-7. Northampton won its first six games before the final by a combined score of 78-17.

“Us and Four Rivers had dominating runs. It’s nice that we’re finally up top again. We can compete at the top,” Northampton’s junior Olive Polson-Filas said. “There are more tournaments, we can win these.”

Four Rivers scored the first two points of the game and led 4-1 early before Northampton found Clare Kurtzman for back-to-back scores to narrow it to 4-3.

The Blue Devils brought it within 5-4 with a massive throw to Polson-Filas that she elevated and snatched out of the sky in the end zone. But the Otters put away the next four points to take an 8-4 lead into halftime.

“We came into this tournament with high hopes but still the idea that it was going to be really hard,” Polson-Filas said. “It was, but we were able to play really well and played better than any of us expected to.”

Northampton stormed out of the half with two quick scores to Tatum Hathaway to pull within 8-6. The Otters responded with a long throw that Oliva Vassar dove and picked off the ground to go up 9-6.

Polson-Filas scored to make it 9-7, but the time cap passed and Four Rivers ended the game 10-7.

“We came in thinking this was going to be a rebuilding year, and it ended up being we can really compete with some of the better teams,” Northampton’s Lila Nields-Duffy said.

Host Amherst finished fourth in the Gx division after falling 8-5 against Columbia in the third-place game.

In the open Division, Amherst’s boys team took fourth after Lexington defeated the Hurricanes 12-8. Amherst had won the past three events. The Hurricanes lost 12-11 against Pennsbury in the semifinals, the team they defeated in last year’s championship game.

Northampton took ninth in Division 1 after beating the Amherst JVA squad 13-2 to finish the tournament.

PVPA placed fourth in the Open Division 2 bracket. Lincoln-Sudbury won the third-place game 15-7. Amherst’s JVB team was fifth after taking down PVCICS 11-10 in the fifth-place game, while the Amherst middle school team was seventh.

Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.]]>