Bad breaks have been the Lion tamer this seaon, and this weekend it finally broke the field hockey team’s backs. The Lady Lions lost two home games to Old Dominion and North Carolina, both by 2-1 margins.

The Lady Lions went from playing the best they’ve looked this season against No. 1 Old Dominion, to a lackluster performance, at best, against No. 6 North Carolina. The common factor for both games, however, was that bad breaks were what beat the Lady Lions in both matches.

“We just don’t get the breaks,” defender Jill Pearsall said after the UNC loss. “It isn’t like these teams are dominating us. When we lose, it is bad luck.”

The Lady Lions vowed to stick to their guns.

“We are a young team, and so we have to be aggressive,” Char Morett said. “Prevent defenses tend to give up more big plays than normal defenses do, so we decided to stick to our game.”

Just like last year’s Penn State-ODU matchup, Chris McGinley, with assists from Amy Stairs and Jen Stewart, hooked up on the McGinley-Co-Captian-connection.

The Lady Monarch attack was on fire, but the Lady Lions covered them like a blanket to smother it.

“Our team defense looked great,” defender Becca Main said. “I think we realized that we have 11 players, and they have 11 players, and it doesn’t make a difference who they are.”

Old Dominion put a lot of pressure on freshman goalkeeper Shelly Meister, and she proved that she could play with the best.

“Their shots were coming really fast,” Meister said. “They had me real nervous at first, but then I saw that I was stopping them.”

It took the Lady Monarchs until late in the first half to score against the Lady Lion defense. From that point until late in the game, the match became a stalemate between Penn State’s defense and the Lady Monarch attack.

With a harder pass here, or a different play there, the game could have gone either way. With less than ten minutes left, ODU scored, and did not leave time for the Lady Lions to recover.

The Lady Lions were not distraught over the loss to ODU, as a matter of fact, they were quite happy with the level of play.

They had hoped to carry this intensity to their match against UNC, but the Lady Lions played a flat, emotionless game.

“We were a step behind them the entire match,” Morett said. “They wanted to win more than we did. If we don’t play like winners, we don’t deserve to.”

Less than two minutes into the game, North Carolina’s Sharon Moore scored on a rebound from a penalty corner. The Lady Lions showed a brief glimmer of life, and countered with the McGinley-Co-Captain-connection.

McGinley scored on a penalty corner to tie the match. That, however, was the last of the scoring.

Then, in the latest segment of Penn State’s bad breaks, North Carolina’s Kelly Staley caught Meister off guard, when she ran out of the cage to break up a pass. Meister missed the ball, and Staley stumbled. By some fluke, the ball rolled in front of Staley while she was down, and Meister was still out of the cage. Staley slammed the ball into the net.

“We’ve had a lot of bad luck this season, especially in big games,” Sharon Kuntz said. “Sooner or later we will have to get a break.”