The Red got a chance to face some of the tough Ivy competition at the Ivy Scrimmages, held from Friday through yesterday. It allowed the Red to get some good practice and see what it will have to work on during the season.
“We played pretty well at the Ivy Scrimmages,” said sophomore Maxi Prinsen. “We lost to Princeton, but then we beat Brown and came close to beating Dartmouth.”
The Red wasn’t able to beat Princeton, who is ranked No. 4, but was able to beat No. 7 Brown with an 8-1 victory.
Cornell’s dominating preformance showed the potential for a great season that this squad posses.
Cornell also faced No. 6 Dartmouth and had a solid performance but came up just short.
“We know that it is going to be tough against the other Ivies,” Prinsen said. “But our team is going to do much better than last year.”
The Red was ranked No. 9 last season and believes that it can be even higher this year despite the youth of a team — with only two seniors on the roster.
“We have a young team,” Prinsen said. “But our young team is better than any team we’ve ever had before.”
Prinsen played No. 1 for the Red her freshman year and now continues to led the team at the top position. Fellow sophomore Alex Cornett played No. 2 for the squad while freshman Rachel Wagner played No. 3. The top-3 may all be underclassmen, but the team feels stronger and more experienced than ever.
“It was a pretty successful trip,” said senior co-captain Jamie Singer. “I was really proud of the way people played.”
Singer, junior co-captain Mairin Barnes and senior Margot Dickson look to bring leadership to the very young team and guide it through some of the more difficult matches over the course of the year.
“We want to finish in the top-8,” Signer said. “We want to beat Brown again during the regular season as decisively as we did last weekend.”
The Red also has many new recruits, including freshmen Jen Chu, Annie Ritter and Liza Stokes, along with Wagner.
Chu played No. 5 at the Ivy Scrimmages and was able to defeat her Brown opponent.
“It was really nice having the freshman at the scrimmage,” Prinsen said. “They were surprisingly good in their first match.”
For the Red experience may be in short supply, but the squad showed that it is capable of competing with the other Ivies at this weekend’s scrimmages.