Earlier today the Quinnipiac women’s field hockey team opened the regular season for QU sports at the Quinnipiac Field Hockey and Lacrosse Turf Complex with a solid 6-2 win against the Holy Cross Crusaders. The win marks the first time in Division I school history that QU has scored six goals in a game.
In addition to team history, freshman Danielle Allan made Quinnipiac D-I history today after she scored two goals and tallied one assist. Allan set the record for most points in a Bobcat debut with five, and is the first QU player to score twice in her first game.
Quinnipiac’s Nicole Lewis made three saves in the win, while the Crusaders’ Kat Matchett tallied five saves in the loss.
With Hurricane Irene just days away from hitting the QU campus, the weather was hot and sunny for the home opener. “So far in the preseason I have been happy with our girl’s physical condition,” said QU coach Becca Kohli. “It was difficult today because there just aren’t many hot and humid games in the season, but our girls handled it well.”
Kohli continued by saying that there were some parts of the game that they needed work on. “Our defense had a few glitches today, but there is no such thing as a perfect field hockey game.”
Holy Cross, a team who couldn’t win a game last year, did a good job of taking advantage of those defensive glitches when QU committed them. Both of the Crusaders’ goals came off of penalty corners.
After the Bobcats took a 2-0 lead following goals by senior Kaitlyn Notarianni and the first of two for Allan, the Crusaders cut the lead in half at the 31:43 marker of the 1st half.
Then just 2:35 later the Bobcats took their two goal lead back. Allan took control of the ball on the right side of the field and saw an opening she couldn’t pass up. As she deked between two Crusaders, she was able to get Matchett to bite. As soon as Matchett made a break out of the net to cut down Allan’s angle, Allan bumped away from the net and around the Holy Cross goaltender to tap in her second goal of the day.
“I was pleased with the way our offense worked today. We were able to spread our attack and more importantly get our high forwards into the play,” said Kohli.
Allan led the Bobcats in scoring with two goals and one assist. She could have had more if it was not for an outstanding stop from Matchett. As Allan cut across the offensive zone from right to left, Matchett was forced to dive across the goal mouth with her stick completely extended to stop the shot. After being burned the first time, Matchett chose to wait for Allan to make the move.
Five minutes into the second half Holy Cross moved closer again cutting QU’s lead to one. The score remained that way for nine minutes until the Bobcats put away the Crusaders with three straight goals. Within that nine minute period, and for an overall theme in the game, QU was able to control the clock.
Coach Kohli noted that she wanted to do the same tomorrow against Lehigh. “We want more clock maintenance. Lehigh is a different team than what we saw today, but we still want to do more of what we did today.”
“There aren’t many times in field hockey that you play back to back days,” Kohli said. “We start the season with back to back games, and we have mentioned that the only other time we will see that is if we play in the NEC championship in late October or early November. Our goal is to start the season with back to back games and end the season the same way.”
Due to the impending storm, Sunday’s game against Lehigh has been moved to tomorrow, Saturday August 27th. Tune in right back here to listen to a live broadcast of tomorrow’s game at 3:30 and every home game for the remainder of the season.
