Chong Gu/Contributing Photographer
The field hockey team suffered a 1-0 overtime loss to Wellesley College in Wesleyan’s home opener on Wednesday night. The Cardinals fell to 0-2 on the season but remained 0-1 in the NESCAC.
Sara Grundy ’16 had a strong game in the net, blocking six of the seven shots that came her way. She increased her season save percentage to .783, allowing only the lone goal in the sixth minute of the first overtime period when Wellesley had a two-on-one attack.
“I think that we played our game; we controlled the ball and definitely dominated the game,” said co-captain Amber Bruckner ’14.
The Cardinals controlled most of the game, getting off 10 shots, five of which were on goal, in addition to setting up 12 corners.
“I think we did a really good job of drawing more offensive corners along with limiting the amount of defensive corners,” Bruckner said. “We also have been working on inside-outside passing, and I think we did a good job of moving the ball around tonight.”
However, the team was unable to produce many second-chance opportunities.
“Wellesley did a good job clearing the ball out of their zone and had good stick-to-stick passing on their sidelines,” said co-captain Blair Ingraham ’14.
A scary moment occurred early on in the OT when Hannah Plappert ’16 was hit in the face with a stick on the follow-through of a Wellesley player’s shot. Following the game, she was taken to the hospital where doctors determined that she had neither a broken nose nor a concussion. Ingraham affirmed from the hospital Wednesday night that Plappert was in good spirits.
During the coming practices, the team will look to sharpen its offensive corner play, ball control, and passing as the girls prepare for their next game against Babson College.
“I think we need to work on capitalizing on our offensive opportunities,” Bruckner said. “We need to focus on our offensive corners, because we did have a lot of opportunity in the circle tonight, but we need to execute our plays more effectively.”
Ingraham added that the team is already improving in this area, showing progress after the season-opening loss at Bowdoin, but she agreed that there is work left to be done.
“We need to continue working hard as a team by using stick-to-stick passing and inside-outside passes up the field,” Ingraham said. “We’ve already improved since Bowdoin, but we all know we can do more.”
Although this 0-2 start to the season was not what the team had hoped for, both Ingraham and Bruckner agree that this team has a lot of potential.
“It’s still really early in the season, and we’re going to use the last two games as motivation for the rest of our season,” said Ingraham.
Wesleyan encountered a dominant team in its first game and played Wellesley much tougher, giving Bruckner hope that her team could keep capitalizing on these learning experiences.
“I think that we can learn a lot from our losses,” she said. “[We must] take these games and use them as motivation for the rest of the season….We got our first-game nerves out of the way, and if we focus on capitalizing on our offensive opportunities, I think we will have a successful season,” said Bruckner.
The elusive first win could come Friday at 5 p.m. when the Cards host Babson, which is 2-2 on the season, at Smith Field.