WOODSIDE — Cape Henlopen High field hockey coach P.J. Kesmodel prefers to keep his timeouts in his pocket.

But when Polytech opened up with four goals against the Vikings on Tuesday, Kesmodel considered burning a timeout early. He decided if Polytech’s lead got to five, he would take one.

He never needed to call timeout.

The Vikings closed the first half with 11 unanswered goals and ended up with a 19-9 victory. Cape Henlopen improved to 8-3 while the Panthers dropped their first game of the season to fall to 9-1.

“I figured it couldn’t get any worse,” said Kesmodel of Cape’s start. “I don’t like to call timeouts because it shows you don’t have faith in your kids and you’re panicking. If they had gone five it would have been a little much, but we got a couple and got back in it. I thought we were better, but you got to go out and play the whole game. ... We got too much talent.”

Sarah Tappan led Cape with seven goals while Lizzie Frederick and Cailey Thornburg each had a hat trick. Jordan Brown scored twice and Cameron Wick, Tess Bernheimer, Taylor Gooch and Alexa Woodruff added a goal apiece.

Cape stretched its winning streak against Delaware opponents to 78 consecutive games. The last time the Vikings lost to an instate team was May 2, 2009 against St. Andrew’s.

The Vikings’ three losses have all come to teams from Maryland (Queen Anne’s County, Stephen Decatur and Worcester Prep).

“I definitely think this is a really telling game of the season,” Frederick said. “Everybody has been talking about how we’re not as good as the last couple years because we’ve lost three games already. This was definitely something to tell the rest of the state how good we are and what we’re actually made of.”

Alison McKay and Kathryn Richardson scored the first two goals of the game for Polytech before Jamie Trabaudo netted back-to-back goals for the 4-0 lead. The Vikings needed about three minutes to tie and Thornburg scored with 14:34 left in the half for a 5-4 lead.

Polytech didn’t score again until McKay’s goal two minutes into the second half. By that time the lead was 12-5 in favor of Cape.

“After the first four goals, this was one of the best games we’ve played all year,” Kesmodel said.

“We’ve had a slump and didn’t play our best against Ursuline (on Saturday, a 16-7 win),” Tappan said. “We just had to get back into it. We didn’t change anything. We just stepped up the intensity.”

Trabuado ended with five goals and McKay had three.

Cape Henlopen has four more instate games left beginning with Caesar Rodney on Thursday at 4 p.m. The Vikings will have a chance to potentially extend their Delaware winning streak to 80 games on Monday when they host Sussex Tech (7 p.m.).

“Every game there’s more and more pressure,” Tappan said. “But we just have to step it up every game.”

Staff writer Tim Mastro can be reached at tmastro@newszap.com or 741-8224.

Follow @TimMastroDSN on Twitter.