W. Lax suffers a heartbreaking loss

The Penn women's lacrosse team fell to 0-2 when Stanford won on a goal in the closing seconds. The Penn women's lacrosse team was hoping to send Stanford and its barrage of fans back to California in tears. Instead, the Cardinals (4-3) were all smiles when they proved that they could compete with teams on the East Coast by surprising the Quakers (0-2) to claim an 8-7 victory at Franklin Field. Eighty-five fans turned out for the 7 p.m. game, including numerous Stanford suporters. "We had something to prove," Stanford sophomore center Katherine Barnes said. Barnes scored the winning goal with six seconds remaining to break a 7-7 tie and make Stanford's plane ride home a lot more pleasant. In spite of the fact that East Coast teams are traditionally stronger than the teams from the West, Stanford felt that it could challenge the Quakers this year after staying close in the second half of last year's 19-8 Penn win. "The second half of our game last year, where there was only a one- or two-goal difference in the scoring in the half? was very optimistic for us," Stanford coach Heidi Connor said. "We knew that because of the two-goal differential [in the second half] last year, that our team was able to play with this team, and if we played a full 60 minute game and didn't have any let-downs, that it would be close." This was the Quakers' second official game under assistant coach Alanna Wren after the players petitioned to have head coach Anne Sage removed. Sage cancelled a meeting with the Athletic Department earlier in the day and her status remains uncertain. Penn was hoping to put the coaching situation aside and rebound from an 11-5 defeat at the hands of Yale on Saturday. Instead the Quakers found themselves on the losing end when time ran out. "Yale was a better team and we definitely played up to them," Penn senior co-captain Jen Leisman said. "We played down to Stanford and we lost a lot of what we know how to do -- our fundamentals. We definitely played down tonight." Penn started the game on a positive note when sophomore attacker Annie Henderson assisted junior co-captain Brooke Jenkins on the first goal of the game, only 52 seconds into the first half. Jenkins tore her ACL in last year's win over the Cardinals and missed the remainder of '98. Stanford rebounded less than a minute later, though, with an unassisted goal by freshman attacker Sara Lev to tie the game at one. "We definitely need to be more aggressive on the defense," Leisman said. "That's what hurt us defensively. That's what let them get so many shots and so many goals." But the Red and Blue remained within striking distance for the duration of the game thanks to damage control by sophomore goalkeeper Christian Stover. The Cardinals outshot the Quakers 23-13 but Stover had an outstanding game and saved 15 of the potential goals and allowed only eight balls to slip past her. Stanford led by a score of 3-1 before the Quakers scored two successive goals to knot the score at three on Jenkins' second goal of the game. Barnes scored again for the Cardinals, but Penn sophomore Amy Goh scored with 2:06 remaining in the half to even the score at 4-4. Despite the sloppy play of the Penn defense, the Quakers managed to remain tied at halftime. "Our defense was patient tonight [but] we needed to be more aggressive against a team like Stanford and force them to make errors," Leisman said. "We kind of sat back and waited for them to do what they wanted to do and that's not the way to play a team like Stanford." But Stanford was not content. "We definitely had something to prove," Barnes said. "So I guess that we just said at halftime that there was no way we were going to lose the game." Barnes then took matters into her own hands and scored the first goal of the second half to put her team ahead by one point. After a tying goal by Jenkins, Stanford scored twice more to make the score 7-5. Just when it looked like the Cardinals were well on their way to victory number four for the season, the Quakers came to life in the final two minutes. With the help of key saves by Stover in net, the offense scored twice in a 37-second time span. First, sophomore attacker Annie Henderson scored on a perfect pass by freshman Jen Hartman. Jenkins then tied the game, sending the Penn fans in attendance into a frenzy, chanting "STAN-ford, STAN-ford, you suck!" While the Penn faithful rallied behind the team with cheers of "Let's go Quakers," the Cardinal slowly made its way down the field. "I wasn't really thinking," Barnes said. "I just thought that somebody had to take it to goal and I decided that I could do it." After a series of passes behind the Quaker net, Barnes finished what she started with her second goal of the half, her third of the night. "We decided to get back into it, and then we just blew it at the end," Leisman said. "We just kind of sat back and watched them play. We need to go out there and want it more, and we didn't." The Quakers lost the ensuing face-off and the clock ran out, leaving them still searching for the first win of the season. "It was a frustrating loss, definitely," Leisman said. "You don't come off the field with such a good feeling." Daily Pennsylvanian sportswriter Rick Haggerty contributed to this article.

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