Longwood Field Hockey (4-7) has been on a roller coaster ride of different plays throughout this season; this past weekend wasn’t any different.
Friday, Sept. 26, the Lancers lost to a (at the time) 1-5 Towson Tiger team, followed by an overtime win against the (at the time) 0-6 Vermont Catamounts on Saturday,
Sept. 27. The team then traveled to Lynchburg, VA for a game against Liberty University (7-4) where the Lancers were beat 8-1.
In the first game of the Lancers’s two-game home stand they hosted Towson in Farmville, VA.
The Lancers were evenly matched with the Tigers through the first half, until the first 10 minutes of the second half when the Tigers scored three unanswered goals.
“Our first-half performance was disappointing; it was a kind of grind it out in the midfield situation, and we did well. We didn’t give away many opportunities, but didn’t create too many,” said Head Coach Iian Byers to the Big South Network.
“Second half we definitely upped it; but, by that time, unfortunately we’d had a ten-minute spell where we gave away three goals.”
The Lancers had began to post a comeback, but were unable to come away with the win, losing the game 3-2.
On Saturday afternoon the Lancers hosted Vermont in the first part of Longwood’s Cancer Awareness Day in the Athletic’s Complex.
The Catamounts had not recorded a win in 699 days (26 games) going into the game with the Lancers; the streak would go to 700 (27 games) after an overtime thriller.
After an evenly matched first-half, the Lancers’s freshman defender Lil-Sophie Achterwinter broke through to give Longwood a 1-0 lead in the 51st minute on the Lancers’ eighth corner of the game.
The lead was short-lived as Vermont was given a penalty stroke in the 56th minute and freshman midfielder Taylor Gaines scored the 1-1 equalizer after converting on the penalty stroke.
The game was then ended after 6:48 of overtime when sophomore defender Kate Harvey scored - on her first goal of the season - the game winning goal off the
Lancers’s tenth corner of the game. Longwood then traveled to Lynchburg to face rival Liberty University in a battle of the LUs. Liberty outplayed the Lancers throughout the entire game with six different Flames scoring goals - including junior forward Ashlee Krulock earning her second career hat-trick - and junior goalkeeper Mallory Cuccio only seeing four shots-on-goal during the game.
Although Longwood sophomore goalie Lauren Bernard allowed eight goals in this game, she still made 11 saves on 20 shots-on-goal. Longwood will be traveling to Mount Pleasant, MI for their fourth installment of MACtion against Central Michigan on Saturday, Oct. 5 at 12 p.m.
