The women’s lacrosse team survived a furious rally by Yale on Saturday to win in overtime by a score of 10-9. It is the 10th win of the season for the Red and the fifth win in the Ivy League. The win clinched at least second place in the league for Cornell.
Seniors Jaimee Reynolds (4 goals, 2 assists), Lori Wohlschlegel (3, 1) and Carrie Giancola (16 saves) all had big days to lead the Red, a fitting tribute to their Senior Day. The team honored its senior class in a pre-game ceremony. This class has been the most successful in team history, combining for a 43-15 over its four years here.
“It was definitely a game of streaks,” said head coach Jenny Graap ’86. “We let Yale come back into the game and it was very upsetting to us.”
The game was evenly matched during the first half as each team traded several goals. Junior Sarah Aversion led off the scoring with a free position goal to give the Red an early lead. Yale responded with Katie Sargent’s tally seven minutes later. Sargent had a big day, scoring five goals, including the first three for the Bulldogs.
Wohlschlegel scored the next two goals for Cornell en route to a three-goal performance on the day. Wohlschlegel made a pretty move to elude the Eli defender to score her first goal and took a feed from Reynolds to score her second. Reynolds then set up sophomore Kate Hirschfield to give the Red a 4-3 advantage. Yale’s Sarah Queener and Cornell’s Reynolds each traded tallies to make the score 5-4 going into the half.
The second half was again a different story for the Red. Cornell came charging out of the gates, dominating play early on and scoring four straight goals. Reynolds scored the first three of these goals to give her 41 points on the season, including 32 goals. Wohlschlegel completed her hat trick with Cornell’s fourth goal of the half. Meanwhile the defense frustrated the Bulldogs for a good portion of the half. Giancola made several saves, and Yale’s leading scorer Miles Whitman and the rest of the Bulldogs offense had been contained by defenders seniors Kari Zarzecki and Katie McCorry, as well as juniors Rachel Friedman and Erica Holveck.
“I think we began to lose our edge late in the second half. We became a bit too tentative. We let the game slip a bit,” said Graap.
Yale started attacking with a sense of urgency a mounted a huge comeback. With less than nine minutes left, Sargent found the back of the net to close the gap to 9-5. Whitman tallied three minutes later to cut the deficit to three. Then Yale scored two goals within 18 seconds of each other to cut the deficit to one. Carrying the momentum into the final two minutes Sarah Driscoll tied the game for Yale with just over one minute remaining in regulation.
Yale then won the ensuing draw and had several more scoring chances. Giancola made several saves and Reynolds intercepted a pass to halt the Yale’s offensive.
During the intermission the Red regrouped and came out more composed in overtime. Both sides had several chances, but Cornell struck first. Averson scored on a free position to give Cornell the lead. Giancola turned away two shots. Cornell controlled the second overtime and ran out the clock.
“It got scary towards the end but we pulled through,” said a relieved Giancola.
Cornell returns to action tomorrow when it faces Colgate in Hamilton, NY.
Archived article by Chris Callanan