Owlch!
For the second time this season, the Lady Lions burrowed the Temple Owls 4-2, this time to win the first round of the NCAA Division I field hockey tournament.
It wasn’t as easy as the score may imply, but Coach Char Morett said she expected a tough battle.
“No doubt about it,” she said. “Playing Temple, any time, you expect a match like that especially in the playoffs.”
The Lady Lions came out to a sluggish start, and Temple took full advantage of the situation.
“I think that we were a little bit nervous,” co-captain Jen Stewart said. “I think we will be a little nervous before every game. But I think that being nervous is good sometimes, then you are not overconfident.”
As a result of the nerves, the biggest part of the first half was an on-going tug of war. The Owls snuffed the Lady Lion attack but were driven back by the impenetrable Penn State defense.
Penn State won the first round of the war when junior Chris McGinley hooked up with the co-captains Stewart and Amy Stairs to score the first goal of the game on a penalty corner about 15 minutes into the match.
At this point, the Lady Lions picked up momentum but had it knocked back out by two quick goals via the Owls.
Temple’s Toni Byard tied the game at 1-1 on a penalty corner with assists from Debbie Utz and Cari Washko.
Less than a minute and a half later the Owls were provided with the opportunity for the go ahead goal through a penalty corner, but did not convert. Five seconds later, however, Crystal Carr drove a pass from Leizabeth Hoek past freshman goalkeeper Shelly Meister.
Despite the two quick goals, the Owls did not feel they were doing what they needed to beat the Lady Lions.
“In the game, we didn’t ever feel that we had them,” Temple defender Washko said. “That was not our team. We were not playing up to our potential.”
The second half was an entirely new game for the Lady Lions. They came out with the Lady Lion vigor that had been absent through out the first half.
“In the first half, we were waiting to catch the ball,” Morett said. “In the second half, if there was a loose ball, our defenders and backs were realy going after it. That creates the transition for us we need to get up the field.”
It did not take the Lady Lions long to get up the field in the second half. Only two and a half minutes into the second half McGinley hooked up with the Co-Captain Connection to tie the game at 2-2.
That goal took the game in hand for the Lady Lions, and the attack sparked.
This spark was enough to knock the emotion out of the Owls, and the ball spent the remainder of the match circling the Temple goal.
“Temple plays on all emotion,” Stewart said. “And once we had their emotion out of the game, we were pretty sure we had it.”
With seven minutes left McGinley pulled out the go-ahead goal when she hooked up with the Co-Captain Connection to make the score 3-2 in favor of Penn State.
Following that goal the Owls nose-dived, and McGinley put the capper on the Lady Lions scoring when Marcy Kolongowski tipped a pass from inside the circle back to McGinley who drove it past a sleeping Donna Porter.
“I think that she let it go by her,” McGinley said. “She just kind of watched it roll by, and I was like ‘thank you’, and that was it.”
That was all the Lady Lions needed to advance to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division I field hockey tournament to meet the University of Massachusetts Minutewomen.