The Cornell women’s soccer team knew that it would have a tough battle against Dartmouth on Saturday morning, and it was right. Dartmouth (13-4, 6-1 Ivy) handed the Red its 14th loss on the season in a 4-0 game in the chilly Ithaca weather.
Dartmouth commanded possession from the start of the game. Meanwhile, Cornell stayed on the defensive, trying to thwart the Green’s potent scorers.
It was no surprise that the Green got on the board first. At 8:21 into the game, forward Jen Murray slipped past senior co-captain Julie DeMichele’s missed tackle, and passed to Devon Haskell who booted the ball by senior keeper Meghan Cauzillo. Dartmouth had a lead that it would never relinquish.
Just over a minute later, Murray found her way into the box again. She found the rebound off of one of Cauzillo’s seven saves, and kicked it over the fallen keeper.
Things just went from bad to worse for Cornell. The women continued to play a sloppy and uninspired game, while Dartmouth continued to open scoring chances.
Cauzillo tried to keep the Red close with her heroics, but she could not salvage Jamie Lang’s shot halfway through the first half off one of Dartmouth’s seven corner kicks of the day. Meaghan Kelly capped the scoring for the Green with 3:16 remaining in the first half when she received a bullet from Johanna Putnam and put it in the back of the net.
The Red had dug themselves into a deep 4-0 hole at halftime against a Dartmouth team that has given up onlythree goals in all of its Ivy League contests.
“We came out flat at the beginning of the game,” sophomore midfielder Caitlin Ramsey said. “I don’t know what happened. We weren’t generating offense. Dartmouth had control of the ball.”
The women drastically improved their play in the second half. Head coach Behane Andeberhan replaced Cauzillo with classmate Martha Shaughnessy.
Asked for he reasoning in switching keepers, Andeberhan said “They’re both seniors, and it’s their last game.”
Cornell fought Dartmouth to a stalemate, but the damage had already been done. The Red’s three shots came in the last forty minutes, but the team could not capitalize. Shaughnessy and a rejuvenated defense kept the Green scoreless.
“We stopped worrying and decided to play our game and have fun [in the second half],” Ramsey said.
Nevertheless, as the final seconds disappeared from the clock, only one team was celebrating. Dartmouth.
“The girls really wanted to win this game for the seniors,” Andeberhan said. “They came out too excited in the first half. We were able to settle down in the second.”
The Green had everything to lose and the Red had nothing to lose when Dartmouth came up to the East Hill.
Ranked 19th according to the NSCAA poll and tied for first with Princeton in the Ivy League, the Green needed to beat the Red to keep its first-place standing among the Ivies and possibly procure an at-large bid for the NCAA tournament (which it received last night).
The 2000 Cornell women’s soccer team will enter into the record books after it in surpassed the 1997 team for most losses ever. But more importantly, it was a rebuilding year for the program.
“This was a very important year to lay the ground work for the team,” Andeberhan commented now that his innaugural year as head coach has come to a close. “It’s been very rewarding working with this group. And I am pleased with what we accomplished this season,” he continued.
Seniors Cauzillo, Shaughnessy, forward Erica Olson, and co-captain midfielder Sarah Natchez will leave Cornell unsatisfied, and their leadership on the field will be missed. As for the underclassmen, they looking forward to a successful 2001 campaign where they will not only be able to compete with every other team in the nation, but defeat them.
Archived article by Amanda Angel