In front of a packed crowd at Stevenson-Pincince field, the women’s soccer team (8-2-3, 2-1-1 Ivy) tied Dartmouth (6-2-4, 2-0-2) 0-0 on Saturday evening. Entering the weekend, the Bears stood at second place in the Ivy League standings, trailing behind Dartmouth by only one point. But after Harvard clinched three points by beating Yale 2-0, rising to first place in the process, the Bears dropped to third in the conference.
During Saturday’s match-up, Brown trounced the Big Green in opportunities to score. But despite outpacing Dartmouth 7-2 in corner kicks and 7-1 in shots on goal, the Bears were unable to overcome Dartmouth’s unrelenting defense.
In an interview with The Herald, Head Coach Kia McNeill said the team has been “very good on set pieces, and particularly corner kicks this year.” But because their opponents continue to target Bruno captain and stand-out player Naya Cardoza ’26, McNeill believes the Bears have been unable to convert these opportunities into fruitful plays.
Going forward, “that’s where we need somebody else to step up and really take ownership in those moments,” she said.
From the moment the opening whistle blew, the Bears took the offensive. Ten minutes into the game, Bruno encountered their first chance at a goal when Jael-Marie Guy ’29 — who won Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week after last weekend’s 4-0 victory over Penn — stormed past a Big Green defender, before entering a one-on-one against Dartmouth’s Kate Ryan.
Ryan tried to box Guy out, and after pivoting out to the left, Guy fired the first shot of the game. But in a lunging effort, Ryan was able to deflect the ball, foreshadowing the prevailing theme of the game: a ruthless offensive pursuit by the Bears and a stalwart defensive effort by Dartmouth.
Throughout the rest of the half, Brown tallied another three shots. Despite recording four times the number of opportunities as the Big Green, the Bears couldn’t get past Dartmouth goalkeeper Ola Goebel.
Reflecting on the first half, McNeill said both teams were playing “not to lose the game, as opposed to really … being the aggressor.”
When the Bears found themselves still scoreless with the time ticking down in the second half, they changed their tune.
With 9 minutes left in the game, Brooke Birtwistle ’28 set up to take a free kick. Arcing the ball into the box, she found Hannah Schapiro ’27, who then fired a shot into the bottom right corner. Blocking the offensive effort, Goebel deflected the ball in a desperate lunge.
It bounced for just an instant before Cardoza, standing a few yards away from the goal, fired another shot. Unfortunately for Brown, Goebel came up with another miraculous save, and in a wild scramble for the ball, the Big Green was able to clear it from the box.
“We were able to bring some of our key identities to the game,” Cardoza said in an interview with The Herald. “We were winning a lot of aerial balls. I think we were bringing a lot of pressure towards Dartmouth.”
Less than a minute later, disaster almost struck for the Bears. Pulling past Bruno’s defensive line, Dartmouth’s Maeve Theobald launched a shot towards the right corner of the Brown goal. Goalkeeper Bella Schopp ’26 lunged for the ball, but it passed just inches shy of her fingers.
For a brief moment, the whole stadium held their breath as the ball bounced off the goalpost, but before the Bears had a chance to rally, Theobald caught up to her own deflection and smoothly placed the ball into the back of the net.
As the Big Green began to celebrate their first goal of the day, the Bears, counting their lucky stars, pointed to the referee’s raised flag: Dartmouth was offside.
“We work a lot on holding our back line, so it was very close, but we were able to keep them in that offside position,” Cardoza commented. “But even though it was called back, we want to make sure that there’s not that many chances going into any Ivy games.”
When the final whistle blew, the score was the same as it had been 90 minutes ago — 0-0.
Reflecting on the scoreless match, Guy noted that the team is “hungry” to get more wins.
“As a team, we have the personnel to be able to get to those moments,” Guy said. “It’s really just about finishing them and capitalizing on those small moments.”
This coming Saturday night in Cambridge, the Bears will face Harvard in their fifth Ivy League conference game of the season — hoping to make it a third consecutive win against the Crimson.
