Women's Soccer stomps Dartmouth in Ivy League home opener

The women’s soccer team topped Dartmouth, 2-0, in Saturday’s Ivy League home opener. The Tigers secured the game early in the game with goals from freshman forward Abby Givens and senior captain and forward Tyler Lussi.

Finishing a cross along the endline from Lussi, Givens knocked the ball into the back of the net from the penalty kick area in just the sixthminute of the match. Less than two minutes later was a free kick from the midfield from senior captain and midfielder Jesse McDonough that Lussi finished with a header into the right corner.

Lussi's goal, which sealed the victory for the Tigers, was the 52ndof her collegiate career, placing her in fourth for the most goals scored and in fifth for points accumulated in the Ivy League. The captain ranks behind only Harvard’s Kelly Landry (68) and Sue St. Louis (66) and Brown’s Theresa Hirschauer (62), all of whom played in the 1980s, for career goals. With 120 points, Lussi trails only Landry (160), St. Louis (148), Hirschauer (131), and Penn’s Katy Cross (125).

Princeton now holds an overall 8-1-1 record for the season and 1-0-1 for the Ivy League. Following Saturday’s win, the Tigers are currently in third place in the league, with four points. Harvard and Columbia, both 2-0, share the first place position.

The Tigers are scheduled to face Lehigh next on Tuesday night, then Brown on Saturday at 4 p.m. at Roberts Stadium for the third game of the Ivy League season.

Last Saturday’s Ivy League season opener against Yale ended in a disappointing tie, but the team’s resilience displays its deep-rooted motivation to perform at an unprecedented level for the Ivy League and to do so one game at a time. “Ivy League play across all the sports is an annual athletic ritual with an amazing 80-year history,” Lussi commented about the significance of the conference. “Eight teams across all the [NCAA] Division 1 sports are inspired to rocket above their normal athletic capabilities with an intensity that is unmatched. [Coaches] Sean [Driscoll], Kelly [Boudreau], Mike [Poller], and Alison [Nabatoff] keep us urgently focused on the game in front of us. There is nothing else except our course work, food, recovery, sleep, and, on the day of the contest, the roar of the crowd!”

Lussi further explained her team’s commitment to achieving success this fall season both on and off the soccer pitch, “With Jesse a returning captain and Vanessa [Gregoire], Nicole [Loncar], and me as the new captains, we have expanded our role beyond the traditional soccer-playing leadership, on and off the field,” Lussi stated. “Sean and Kelly, together with Mike and Alison, have provided us the opportunity to lead the culture change within Princeton women's soccer to expect to win the Ivy League and successfully compete at the highest levels of the NCAA Tournament every year. The goal and practice of striving to be the best Division 1 women’s soccer team in the NCAA is a subset of the foundation and results that [Ford Family Director of Athletics] Mollie Marcoux and her team are striving to enable all Princeton student athletes and coaches to achieve, and women’s soccer is ‘ALL IN.’”