By Staff
The Kenyon field hockey team kept busy last weekend, first taking on Denison University on Saturday, Oct. 26 and then hitting the road to play at Oberlin College the next day.
While Kenyon fell in overtime to Denison 3-2, the Ladies responded in full force with a 5-0 shellacking of Oberlin.
Coming into Saturday’s match, Denison was atop the conference standings with an 11-game winning streak during which Denison outscored their opponents 42-5.
Saturday’s game put Denison’s dominance to the test for they faced a Kenyon team that had made considerable strides since falling to Denison 3-1 earlier in the season.
Denison got on the board first, but it was mere minutes before Kenyon responded, as Co-Captain Maddie Breschi ’16 converted on a penalty stroke to tie things up at one apiece.
Julie Freedman ’15 broke the tie for Kenyon when she nailed a 20-yard snipe, giving Kenyon their first lead over Denison since Sept. 20 of last year.
Denison finally broke through at the 61:33 mark, sending the game into overtime. Neither squad had lost an overtime game to date, with Kenyon having recently won their sole overtime match 1-0 against Ohio Wesleyan and Denison entered the extra time with a perfect 3-0 record in overtime games.
But Denison’s overtime record moved to 4-0 when they scored the game-winning goal at 4:48 into the extra session.
With the loss, Kenyon fell to 10-6 and 8-4 in North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) play, while Denison improved to 16-1 overall and 12-1 in conference play.
Despite the loss, Head Coach Jacque DeMarco was pleased with her team’s quality of play against Denison.
“I think we played the best we’ve played all season,” DeMarco said. “It was a great team effort. I was very proud of them.”
Looking ahead into the NCAC playoffs next week, DeMarco is optimistic about Kenyon’s chances given their recent performance.
“I think that we most likely are going to see [Denison] again next week, and I think that we have a good chance of defeating them because of the way we played this past weekend,” DeMarco said.
With little time to dwell on Saturday’s loss, Kenyon headed to Oberlin on Sunday. Just like Kenyon’s previous 6-2 handling of Oberlin, the Ladies dominated once again in the 5-0 rout.
Breschi scored four times for Kenyon, and added an assist on a goal from Co-Captain Susie Gurzenda ’14. Breschi was awarded the NCAC Player of the Week for her stellar performace.
In addition, Breschi’s high-scoring weekend brought her season total to 40 points, tying Kenyon’s single-season points record, which she will have a chance to break this Saturday, Nov. 2 when the Ladies travel to play the College of Wooster.
With the win over Oberlin, Kenyon secured the No. 3 seed in the NCAC playoffs. This will be Kenyon’s first game in the NCAC postseason since 2008.
Kenyon will face Wooster on Nov. 2 in their regular season finale, and although this game has no playoff implications for the Ladies, Rachel Hall ’15, who had an assist in Kenyon’s victory over Oberlin, stressed the importance of closing out the regular season with a victory.
“We want to make sure that we let everyone know in the conference, and just for ourselves too, that we are a force to be reckoned with and that we want to win,” Hall said.
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