With just under two minutes remaining in yesterday’s field hockey game against Brown, and the score tied at 1-1, the Red figured it was headed towards its second overtime game of the season. Tess Belmont had other plans.
The Brown sophomore netted a breakaway goal to carry the Bears past the Red, 2-1, on Schoellkopf Field. The other goal for Brown came earlier in the second half, which evened the game up at one. It was scored by senior Laurel Pierpont off of a redirected shot from classmate Lizzie Buza. Pierpont’s goal moved her into a tie for second place on the Bears in points, with 12. Buza leads the team in that category with 15. The two goals came in the latter minutes of the second half, after the Red led 1-0 for most of the contest.
“Our goal is to play 70 minutes of hard hockey, but sometimes we’ll have a minor lapse,” said assistant coach Beth Sullivan ’99.
Yet the lapse came after Brown — which received votes in a national poll this week — came out flat. The Red dominated play in the first frame, out-shooting the Bears, 8-6. Senior goalie Kaitlin Tierney stopped four of those shots, and ended up with seven saves.
Although Brown had the edge in penalty corners, 4-3, the Red was able to capitalize on one of its opportunities, as senior Karleigh Burns netted her third goal of the season off of a rebound.
The score remained 1-0 until just under 15 minutes in the second half, when the Bears mounted their offensive barrage. Yet the Brown defense in the second frame was what carried the team to victory. The Red managed just two shots, neither of which Brown goalie Kathryn Noe needed to make saves on. Noe redirected five shots in contest, and let up only one goal, to lower her goals against average to under 1.76 per game.
With the loss, the Red drops to 3-10 on the season and 1-5 against the Ivy League, while Brown improves to 9-5 and 3-2 in the Ivy. The Red’s last Ivy contest will be on Nov. 8 in the season finale at Dartmouth.
Sullivan noted, “We just want to finish strong. As a coaching staff we’ve been trying to keep to the basics, and we’re trying to focus on the positives.”
The Red has lost nine of its last 10 contests, and has lost five conference games in a row, going into a midweek battle with regional rival Syracuse this Wednesday night.
Archived article by Chris Mascaro