The Geneseo women’s field hockey team has had its share of ups and downs throughout the first half of the season.
The highs include a three-game winning streak early in the season, bookended with thrilling overtime wins against the University of Rochester and SUNY Oswego. Some lows have been losing to both Salisbury University in Pennsylvania and William Smith College on Sept. 4 and 28, respectively.
The 5-1 loss to William Smith was the largest margin of defeat the Knights have suffered all season, but the final score is not indicative of how close the game really was. The game remained scoreless for the first 30 minutes, but head coach Jessica Seren believed Geneseo had the upper hand.
“We outplayed them in the first half,” Seren said after the game. “But defensively [we] had a lapse in the last three minutes.”
Indeed, the Herons rallied to score two goals in the last three minutes of the first half to take the momentum into the locker room.
Geneseo was never able to recover from the halftime deficit, and it was 5-0 before sophomore forward Kerry Hosford scored off a feed from fellow sophomore Kayla DeAngelis.
“They took the wind out of our sails in the first half, and we were never able to recover mentally from that,” Seren said.
Coming back strong after a tough loss is one of the more difficult obstacles to handle, yet Seren and her players were able to do just that on Sept. 30 when the Knights traveled to SUNY Brockport to take on the Golden Eagles.
“It being a conference game, we knew going into it that it was a key game, looking down the road towards playoffs,” said the fourth-year coach. “Whoever lost would put themselves in must-win situations for the rest of their schedule.”
Geneseo was up for the task and came away with a decisive 2-0 victory. DeAngelis and sophomore defender Bridget McGovern put away goals midway through the first half, and that was all junior goalie Nicole Zito needed to preserve the victory. Zito played all 70 minutes in goal and collected a save in the shutout.
The Knights then went to St. Lawrence University on Oct. 4 and dominated the game to come away with a 2-1 victory. Geneseo outshot the Saints 14-5 and had 10 penalty corners to St. Lawrence’s two. McGovern had the lone goal, unassisted.
“It’s frustrating to lose when you dominate but at the same time reassuring when you can travel on the road and out-play a quality team such as St. Lawrence. Unfortunately, we left out an important piece – capitalizing on our opportunities and finishing in the circle,” Seren said after the loss.
Halfway through the season, the Knights now stand at 7-4 and are 3-1 in SUNYAC play.
Coach Seren said she is happy that, “We’ve continued to progress this season … We decided we would go into the season taking one game at a time. We understand that last year was good. But the goals we put out for ourselves this year were not based on last year’s performance.”
The Knights take a few days off for fall break before getting back on the field on Oct. 11 to face Hamilton College.