The women’s hockey team kicked off the ECACHL season this past weekend at Lynah Rink with a split against Ivy League foes Brown and Yale. Friday night, Cornell had a primetime start and defeated Brown 3-2. Saturday afternoon, the women had to come back and face a Yale squad with Olympian Helen Resor defending the Cornell offensive zone. In this contest, the Red fell, 4-1, despite battling hard throughout the game.
In the Brown game, freshman Rebecca Flewelling put the Red on the board first as she picked up a loose puck behind the Brown net and wrapped a shot around the post and past Brown goalie O’Hara Shipe only 4:27 into the game. Three and a half minutes later, the Red made the score 2-0 as freshman Laura Danforth passed the puck to junior Brittany Forgues by the left faceoff circle. Forgues knew what to do with the puck afterwards, zipping it past Shipe for a power play goal.
[img_assist|nid=19304|title=Fleeting opening|desc=Freshman Rebecca Flewelling (9) wraps a shot around the post and past Brown goalie O’Hara Shipe (31) to put Cornell on the board first in its 4-1 victory on Friday night. (G. Scott Russ / Sun Contributor)|link=popup|align=left|width=100|height=78]
In the second period Flewelling again picked up the puck behind the Brown net and wrapped the puck inside the near post, scoring her second goal of the game and giving the Red a 3-0 lead. Brown did rally to make it a 3-2 game, but Cornell hung on at the end to post its first victory of the season.
Head coach Doug Derraugh ’91 was very happy to get the first victory out of the way in this young season, despite getting outshot 26-32.
“I thought we came out with a lot of energy early on,” Derraugh said. “I thought we took a lot of the plays to them. I thought we did well on power plays. I think that maybe we let off a little bit in the second period. I would have liked to see them be a little more aggressive than they were, but overall I was very pleased with the energy level in that game.”
There was a little bit of controversy down the home stretch of this game. With less than 40 seconds left, Brown pulled its goalie and put an extra attacker on the ice. Brown took a shot and Cornell senior goalie Beth Baronick covered up the puck and the referee blew the whistle. The Bears, however, kept on playing, and the puck was eventually forced into the net. The goal was not allowed because the whistle had already blown.
As for Flewelling’s first two goals of her career, she was more relieved than anything else that they occurred so early in the season.
“It felt great to get the first goal out of the way,” Flewelling said. “Against Brown, our team played very well. We played with a lot of heart. It was good to get the first Ivy League win.”
In the Yale game, Cornell was only able to muster up one goal while giving up four to Yale. That one goal was scored by junior Brianne Schmidt at 13:25 of the second period. On the two man advantage, freshman Laura Danforth found Schmidt for the power play goal. That made the score 2-1. However, Helen Resor, a bronze medalist in the last Olympics, was too much for the Red to handle. She had three points in the game, which included a goal deep into the second period to put Yale ahead 3-1.
“I thought Yale came out like we did in our game against Brown,” Derraugh said. “I thought they were very hard on their forecheck, they went really hard to the net, and they were strong in front of the net. They got an early lead on us, despite us trying to get pressure to their defense. We actually outshot them in the game, so we were getting the pucks to the net too. But we weren’t getting the second chances, and I didn’t think we were getting the dangerous opportunities that we needed. They did a good job keeping us away from there. Overall, I thought they skated better than we did throughout the game.”
Baronick would agree with her coach’s assessment on Yale’s performance at Lynah Rink.
“Yale played well,” Baronick said. “Coach said before the game that Yale is one of the hardest working teams in the league and they battled hard all game. We battled with them, but we didn’t get the necessary plays we needed to win the game.”