After an impressive 3-0 start to the season the field hockey team was on the wrong side of the 8-ball this weekend as the squad lost two straight overtime games against Penn and Rutgers. The Red, however, is determined to bounce back when they face Yale under the Friday night lights.
“I have tremendous confidence in our team’s ability to bounce back,” said head coach Donna Hornibrook. “Our expectations since day one have been to improve after each and every game. If we do that we will be a good team. There’s a lot of chance involved in OT and sometimes things just don’t go your way.”
“We can only control what we do,” said junior co-captain Belen Martinez. “We are focusing on ourselves rather than other teams.”
The Red has faced three straight overtime games with their first being a victory over Ivy opponent Columbia where junior Alyssa DePaola scored the game winner off the assist from fellow junior Stephanie Brownstein. That was DePaola’s 6th game- winning goal of her career.
DePaola was already off to a hot start this season with one goal and one assist after her first two games. After this she had two goals and an assist in her first three games of the year.
Unfortunately for the Red, its luck disappeared in its next two overtime games.
“Anything can happen in overtime,” Hornibrook said. “It really is a game of chance in OT because we have such a limited number of opportunities and things just didn’t go the way we hoped. We had great practices during the week but nothing could have really prepared us for those two games.”
The Red has out shot every opponent this season except for its most recent game against Rutgers, where the Scarlet Knights only had a 14-13 shot advantage.
“We’ve played really well in all of our games and we’re really looking forward to the rest of the season,” said senior co-captain Katie Bradshaw.
In its first three victories of the season the Red out shot their opponents by an impressive 40-21 margin. They followed that by out shooting Penn and narrowly being out shot by the Scarlet Knights 14-13.
“We outshot Penn and we had the lead with 10 minutes left but we weren’t able to finish,” Hornibrook said. “That’s definitely something we need to work on.”
Despite the two losses, the Red has showcased some great individual performances.
DePaola, Martinez, and freshman Kate Thompson have led the Red so far with great individual performances this season. DePaola had two goals and an assist after her first three games. Thompson was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week. Martinez had both assists for the Red, while playing from the backfield, in its overtime loss to Penn.
Junior Shannon Prescott and senior Lizzie Goldblatt have both produced great performances in goal for the Red this season. Prescott had five saves against Penn bringing her save total to 17 on the season.
Goldblatt had five saves in the defensive battle against Rutgers bringing her save count to six on the season.
“We’ve had 3 OT games in a row. All of our games are going to be tight and we are going to work as hard as possible to make sure we are prepared for each one.” Hornibrook said.