On Friday evening, Wesleyan hosted Connecticut College for its last regular season conference game. The Cardinals took down the Camels 2-1 in an intense overtime victory, clinching the fifth seed in the NESCAC tournament. This positioned Wes in the first round of the tournament against fourth-seed rival Amherst College, who they had faced the previous week in a hard-fought 4-3 loss. Unfortunately, things didn’t go well for the Cards again on Sunday, as they fell to the Lord Jeffs 3-0, ending their NESCAC postseason.
Conn Coll. caught Wesleyan off-guard, scoring within the first two minutes of Friday’s contest. The offenses on both teams remained stagnant until Averill Roberto ’13 broke the deadlock. Roberto whacked the ball past the goalie off a rebound from a corner shot for an unassisted goal at 45:17 in the second half, her fourth goal of the season. Both teams failed to score again in regulation time, propelling the game into not just one but two overtimes. In the second overtime, Liz Chabot ’12 netted her team-leading 11th goal of the season off of a centering pass from Taylor Wells ’14. This gave Wes a celebrated victory and the fifth seed going into the NESCAC tournament first round game on Sunday.
Two days later, away at Amherst, Wes failed to bring the offensive spark it had at the end of its Conn game. Early on, the Cardinals had four penalty corner shots but were unsuccessful in converting them into goals. Amherst was more fortunate with their corners, capitalizing on goal opportunities in the 28th, 45th, and 60th minutes giving the Lord Jeffs a decisive 3-0 victory over the Cards. Overall, Amherst outshot Wesleyan 20-10 and created 11 more corner shot situations. Cardinal goalkeeper Tori Redding ’13 posted an impressive 13 saves throughout the contest.
Wesleyan finished out the season with a 10-5 winning record. There is still a chance the once-nationally-ranked team will receive an NCAA bid depending on the outcome of the semi-final matchup between Tufts and Trinity this Saturday.
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