Field Hockey can't tame Lions

To avoid confusion with a school of similar name, some Penn students can be found wearing shirts that proclaim, "Not Penn State." It would not have been inappropriatte had the Penn field hockey team worn these shirts last night. The Quakers, who lost last night to the Nittany Lions 3-0, are decidedly not Penn State, a team that is ranked 7th in the NCAA Division I. Penn State took a 1-0 lead in the first half last night, and then scored an additional two goals in the second, dealing a defeat to a Penn team that has already suffered more than its share of losses. Despite the lopsided score, Penn were actually enthusiastic about its performance against the Nittany Lions. After losing close games all season against teams whom they felt they were better than or equal to, a game against a clearly better opponent must have come as a welcome reprieve for the Quakers. In the aftermath of last weeks loss to Yale, a team that many Penn players felt they had to beat, Penn State lowered the expectation that the Quakers have been facing, and falling short of, all season. Although Penn began the season with few expectations, it is safe to say that they never imagined themselves faced with this many losses. This year's Quakers started out the season cautious but optimistic. Last year's record did not bode well for the team, but then again many of the personal conflicts that had marred last year's season had left with the players. The team set out with the goal of maintaining friendship amonst players while doing their best to win games against teams with more experience on the field. The team's optimism has slowly unraveled with each lost game. Although the team unity still seems to be intact, their belief in themselves has slowly been crushed by their inability to win games. "[The losses] have weighed me down. [But the players] are very resilient, they are young and resilient, and so it's not like they don't have a couple of years left to go, two or three years to still play," Penn coach Val Cloud said. "I think that has a lot to do with it -- the youth and actually recognizing that [they] are learning. Hopefully next year -- I won't accept this next year because they'll have some experience under their belt. They're capable now but they don't have that go to person that can pump us up or get the goal when we need the goal." There also looms the disturbing prospect that this year's team will end the season with a worse record than last year's. This possibility has become much more likely after last week's loss to Yale -- the only other team in the Ivy League that had gone winless this season and the only Ivy team last year's Quakers beat. Assuming the Quakers continure their pattern of three losses for every win, they will lose to Columbia but beat Brown. However, Brown's defeat of Cornell 5-1, a team that Penn lost to 1-3, suggests the outcome will not be in Penn's favor. The biggest problem facing Penn right now is that they have run out of solutions. They have worked hard to win games, but when it really counted have always come up short. Their series of overtime kosses at the beginning of the season proved that Penn was well matched with many of its opponents, it just couldn't win games. The Quakers should be given credit for having maintained their composure as a team, despite their mounting frustration at the growing string of losses. Their challenge now will be to turn that frustration into a means of winning games. And if frustration doesn't do the trick, then perhaps the prospect of finishing worse than last year will. "We've never stepped on this field this year when we didn't think we could win," Cloud said. "They haven't died on me. If we can beat Columbia and Brown, at this point, the season will be a success.

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