Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be an oncoming RIPTA bus. The field hockey team learned this lesson the hard way over the weekend, discovering that the spark it thought it had found last week was not sufficient to pull out its first win of the season.
After suffering only a 2-1 loss to University of Massachusetts Amherst last Wednesday, the Bears spoke of having turned a corner in terms of improved play on a season that had begun with eight straight losses. But all that went out the window on Sunday, when Brown traveled to Piscataway, N.J. and lost, 2-0, to Rutgers University. The Scarlet Knights outshot the Bears by a margin of 22-2 and held an 11-1 advantage in penalty corners.
"We definitely did not play with the same intensity and toughness that we had displayed at UMass last Wednesday," said Head Coach Tara Harrington '94. "We couldn't get our attack going. ... Defensively, we didn't make the stands that we needed to all over the field to control a very fast and very physical Rutgers team."
The one bright spot for the Bears, now 0-9 on the season, was the play of goaltender Lauren Kessler '11, who made 15 saves in her second collegiate start to prevent Rutgers from running away with the game.
"She's in the right spot at the right time," Harrington said. "If you have a goalkeeper who is positionally sound, that's 95 percent of the battle. She did the simple things really well, and she took care of the basics. That's what you really have to do. If all of us did that on the field, then the outcome, I firmly believe, would have been much different than what it was."
Co-captain Ani Kazarian '08 echoed those sentiments. "Lauren Kessler did an amazing job," she said. "It was great to see a freshman go out there and play with confidence (and) poise. It was an honor to watch her play."
Kessler held up well under a hail of Scarlet Knights shots. Amy Lewis, the leading scorer in the Big East Conference with 12 goals entering the game, converted two of her nine shots into goals. In the 13th minute, Whitney Knowlton '10 made a defensive save on Rutgers' Cat Badolato's shot, but the rebound came to Lewis. She fired a shot that glanced off a Brown defender and into the goal to give Rutgers a 1-0 lead at 12:10.
The score stayed that way until three minutes remained in the game, when Lewis got the ball after a penalty corner and unleashed a shot that found the back of the cage.
Kazarian and Sara Eaton '09 took the only shots for Brown, continuing a stretch in which the Bears have taken only 11 shots in the past three games. Harrington said the blame for the weak showing could be spread widely.
"We just couldn't get our attack going from our backfield right to our forwards," she said. "It doesn't rest solely upon our forwards. If we can't outlet the ball from the backfield and sustain the attack through the midfield to our forwards, we're not going to have those attacking opportunities."
Kazarian said even though the game's result was disappointing, the team would attempt to build off of the loss.
"It was great to see us go out and play with passion at UMass. I think that that passion wasn't there in our last game," she said. "It just didn't click as well as in the previous game. So I wouldn't say that it was a setback, but I think that we're going to have keep improving and moving forward."
Harrington, however, was willing to acknowledge the loss as "a slight step back for us." Nevertheless, she added, "We will not concede. We are fighters, and these kids are tough. We are going to continue to work and make improvements each day. We have to work on all aspects of the game, both our mental aspects and our tactical aspects as well."
Now the Bears turn their attention to the Columbia Lions, who they face in New York on Saturday.
"We will watch film (and) get the kids ready for the Columbia game plan," Harrington said. "Obviously, we will work to improve and have a focus and intensity going into Columbia. It's an Ivy League game, and we want to make a stand."
Both Brown and the Lions are 0-2 in the Ivy League heading into the game.
