The roller coaster season continues for Longwood field hockey, which has a decent record in the NorPac as the regular season winds down. That said, the team has fallen on hard times as of late with two losses to in-state archrival Liberty (9-4, 4-0 NorPac) and a recent 0-4 loss to No. 6 Boston College.
In the past two weeks, the Lancers (6-10, 4-2 NorPac) have played four games, winning one. In their Play4theCure game on Oct. 9, they suffered a 2-4 home loss to Liberty in an exciting match.
Liberty’s Helen Doolittle scored with 1:05 left in the first half via a Natalie Barr assist, and it remained 1-0 through halftime and into the 49th minute, where Ashlee Krulock converted a Serena Barr feed to double the Flames’ lead. Kim Ruiter scored two goals less than a minute apart (52:29, 53:23) to tie the game.
The Barr sisters then took over, with Serena Barr taking a corner from her sister to give her side the lead back at 62:07, and Natalie Barr fired a loose ball past Longwood keeper Kaye Goulding to finish the scoring.
“I thought we played a very good game and stuck to the game plan well. To go two goals down and fight back to 2-2 showed good character, and it definitely showed the experience we've gained throughout the season,” head coach Iain Byers said. “The third goal was a tough one and the fourth one was when we were chasing the game. Although the score line shows 4-2, it was much closer.”
After an 0-4 loss to Boston College in Charlottesville over fall break, Longwood traveled to Liberty for the return match with the Flames, and came up short, losing 6-1. The Barr sisters combined for five of Liberty’s six goals, and had three assists as well. Stacey de Grandhomme scored Longwood’s only goal.
“We're very disappointed with that performance and the result. As a coach, you always want to sugarcoat things and make it sound better than it is, but we did not play well at all today,” Byers said. “The score was 6-1 and it could have been more because we didn't compete against a good conference team. We should be playing better. This makes the job of winning the NorPac Tournament very tough, but we'll keep fighting and we'll improve.”
And improve they did. Sunday was Senior Day in Farmville and seniors Goulding, de Grandhomme, Caitlin Smith and Nicole Segala walked off the Athletics Complex turf for the final time as 5-0 winners over Radford. De Grandhomme had Longwood’s first goal, and Nicole Deckard, Rachel Lombardi and Hollie MacDonald followed up to help Goulding record the memorable shutout.
Byers said, “That was our best performance of the season so far by a mile. The way we moved the ball around made us very proud, particularly on Senior Day. We think we gave the senior class a sendoff in style. To keep a clean sheet and to be so successful in the front line was something that both the team and coaching staff was very happy with. We were effective in the front line and our press was strong, as well.
“We're looking forward to our next game. It's going to be difficult against UNC, which is one of three tough games left. This put us in a good position in our conference, so it will be interesting to see how the rest of the games go. We can only focus on what we can do, but if we keep performing like we did today, we have good things to look forward to.”
The only game between now and next week is a 6 p.m. tilt at No. 3 North Carolina tonight. That game will be broadcast live on ESPN3.
All quotes in this article come courtesy of LongwoodLancers.
