Over the weekend, the Penn field hockey team had two games, two overtimes, and two losses.
The Quakers dropped their second Ivy League contest of the season to Dartmouth, 2-1, in double overtime at Franklin Field Saturday, and suffered a 3-0 loss to cross-town rival Temple yesterday.
“The team that can take advantage of their opportunities will win,” coach Val Cloud said.
Penn (3-8, 1-2 Ivy) was definitely not that team Saturday. On their home turf, the Quakers outshot (19-18) and outsaved (9-8) the Big Green but were unable to even up their Ivy record.
Dartmouth (5-4, 2-1) scored first when junior forward Kelly McHenry redirected the shot taken by teammate Rebecca Sobel to put the ball past Penn goalkeeper Kieran Sweeney.
The Quakers tied it up five minutes later when senior midfielder Kelsey Tahan lobbed the ball on Dartmouth’s goal. Junior midfielder Laurel McGarvie was there to knock the shot down into the cage.
“She’s just glad to be on the field and going all out,” senior co-captain Sarah Warner said of McGarvie, who recently recovered from stress fractures in her shins. “We needed somebody to just to do everything they could to get it into the goal today.”
The score remained tied at one for the remaining 54-plus minutes of regulation.
Despite a promising breakaway by freshman midfielder Sarah Hasson and two saves by Sweeney in the first overtime, the Quakers were unable to get a single shot. In addition to the 3-0 shot advantage, Dartmouth had two penalty corners to Penn’s zero in the extra frame.
“You get to overtime, you’re usually going to lose because somebody made a bad mistake,” Cloud said. “There’s a turnover and off somebody goes — or by a corner.”
And that is exactly how the game ended.
Dartmouth scored the game-winner off of its only corner in the second overtime.
“They had a great corner.,” Cloud said. “They won the game — we did not lose the game.”
Ironically, after getting outplayed in the first extra session, Penn statistically did better in the second one, outshooting (4-2) the Big Green and earning three corners.
It was an improvement from the Quakers’ last Ivy outing, whey they lost to Cornell 22 seconds into overtime.
“We knew it was going to be a battle today; we knew that coming in,” Warner said. “It shows that we still are getting better; we just need to get better faster.”
Penn couldn’t improve its game fast enough, as it lost to Temple (4-9) the following day.
The Quakers’ defense was dominated by sophomore midfielder Bridget Settles, as she netted all three of Temple’s goals.
“[We’ll] hopefully try to finish out the season with a bunch of wins,” senior midfielder Katie Moran said.
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