The field hockey team lost its final game of the season last Saturday, when it fell 6-2 in an away match against Yale.
Leslie Springmeyer '12 and Abigail Taft '12 scored for Bruno, which finished the season with a 5-12 record but failed to win an Ivy League game.
Springmeyer said that the loss was a tough way to end the season, but the Bears regained some pride by scoring the last two goals of the game.
"I was pretty proud of us to keep fighting throughout the whole game," she said.
Brown had ended the previous two seasons with victories over Yale. In 2007, the Bears pulled out a stunning 3-0 victory in a torrential rain storm for their only win of the season. Last year, Springmeyer scored three goals in a 4-1 triumph that gave Bruno its lone Ivy League win.
But those Bulldog teams both went 2-5 in Ivy play. This year's squad, which finished 12-5 overall and 6-1 against fellow Ivies, was a different animal.
Yale got on the board at 12:31 and cruised into halftime with a 2-0 lead and a 16-3 advantage in shots. After 25 minutes of second half action, the Bulldogs held a 6-0 lead.
"We had a good lead-up to the game — we were all pumped for it, but I don't really know" what happened, Springmeyer said. Despite "a couple of defensive breakdowns, our attack couldn't really get generated and the ball wasn't bouncing our way," she said.
Springmeyer put the Bears on the board with 9:01 left in the game. Following a penalty corner, she took a pass from Katie Hyland '11.
"My first shot hit the crossbar, which kind of made me mad," Springmeyer said. "So I just really concentrated on my second shot and was able to put it away. I think that gave our attack a little bit of motivation that it needed. And then Abigail had a great goal shortly after."
Ninety-nine seconds later, Taft beat Yale goalie Charlotte Goins and put the ball in the back of the cage to cut the deficit to 6-2.
"It definitely felt great," Springmeyer said. "It says something about our team — in the final minutes of the game we were able to pull off those two goals. It kind of showed we weren't going to roll over and let them score on us that much and not fight back."
The Bears improved to take six second-half shots. Springmeyer led Brown with three shots, while Hyland and Whitney Knowlton '10 each took two. Caroline Washburn '12 tallied 10 saves.
Saturday marked the end of the road for the team's five seniors, Knowlton, Madison Miketa '10, and tri-captains Jackie Connard '10, Nora Malgieri '10 and Michaela Seigo '10. The rest of the team will return and look to improve.
"I definitely think we're going to work hard in the offseason," Springmeyer said. "I think our performance in the past two seasons is going to motivate our current players. We'll have new people coming in, and hopefully keep the same dynamic that we had this year of playing for each other, and just keep moving up."
