After dropping two games last weekend, the Stags looked to bounce back to the winning side as they faced the University of California, Davis Aggies. However, after a quick goal for the Aggies to start the second half, Fairfield would struggle to tie in the final minutes as they fell 3-2 on Friday, Sept. 11.
UC Davis set the tone early on offense. Less than a minute into the game, Eden Borsack found her teammate Agustina Singh right in front of the cage for an open shot at the net for her first goal of the season. Six minutes after scoring their first goal, the Aggies struck once again on a similar play as Courtney Hazy received a pass at the center and shot one past Stags’ goalkeeper Caitlin Bennett ‘17 to take an early 2-0 lead over Fairfield.
After 12 minutes without scoring, the Stags would get on the board. Midfielder Jaclyn Gallagher ‘18 battled off heavy defense to swing a pass to Ann Burgoyne ‘17, who hit the ball past the defender to score her fifth goal of the season and Fairfield’s first goal of the afternoon. Both offenses settled down as they went 15 scoreless minutes, keeping the score 2-1.
Fairfield would end the scoring drought after forward Erin Connors ‘16 found herself open in front of the goal and received a quick pass by Jamie Appelberg ‘18 to score and tie the game at two. This was captain Connors’ first goal of her career. The game was tied 2-2 at the half.
However, just minutes into the start of the second half, the Aggies would score their third and final goal of the game to take a 3-2 lead over the Stags. “It took us a while to wake up. We had some great goals to get our team excited and then we let them back in,” said head coach Jackie Kane.
The Stags would struggle to get another goal on the board after several tries at the goal. With one minute remaining in the game, the Stags had a final opportunity to score and tie the game. They decided to take out their goalkeeper, Bennett, giving them an extra attacker on the field. As a result, Fairfield was able to draw two penalty corners in the last seconds of the game.
On the final possession of the game, Ruth Smalbraak ‘19 set the ball from the penalty corner finding its way toward Erin Buckley ‘18 who shot the ball, but was blocked. Fairfield had another opportunity to score as the ball rolled to Ariana von Schenck ’18, but her shot was wide and, just like that, the game was over for the Stags.
“Kudos to UC Davis, but our team needs to rise to the occasion and realize that this is our field and we shouldn’t let anyone come in and push us around,” said Kane after the game.
“We got the corners, we had the ball on cage. It was just unlucky that we didn’t finish when we had the opportunity to. We had the opportunity to take the team to overtime where we probably could have won at that point, but we didn’t get there. We have to learn from the situation, pull together [and] work hard this week because we have a really tough trip to Philadelphia next weekend,” Kane continued.
The Stags are now 1-3 on the season and are set to travel to Philadelphia where they will take on Drexel on Friday, Sept. 18 and Villanova on Sunday, Sept. 20.
Leave a Reply