After Cristi Samaras '99 graduated, women's lacrosse had no established scorer who could take over a game by herself.
Eight games into this season, the Tigers still have not found any one player who has taken over the role as the team's main scoring threat.
Instead, Princeton has four or five who can step up to dominate a game at any moment.
That balanced attack was at work this weekend at 1952 Stadium as the No. 2 Tigers (7-1 overall, 2-0 Ivy League) outlasted No. 8 Virginia, 8-7, Friday afternoon before coming back yesterday to beat Ivy foe Cornell, 12-7.
"The defense fronted me all day, which I wasn't used to, but the great thing about our team is that we can all score," sophomore attack Kim Smith said.
Moving up
Princeton had no player notch more than three goals in a game during the sweep as seven different players were able to find the back of the net. This distribution has kept the opposition off balance all season — and the Tigers moving higher and higher in the national rankings.
The Cavaliers (7-3, 0-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) were hungry for revenge after Princeton beat them in triple-overtime last season. Virginia attacked the Tiger defense early. After sophomore attack Charlotte Kenworthy gave Princeton the early lead by splitting two defenders and putting a high shot past Virginia goalie Francis Segarra, the Cavaliers came back strong. Virginia would score two goals in the next 4:35 to take a 2-1 lead.
The two teams continued to trade goals until senior midfielder Hilary Maddox took a pass from sophomore attack Lauren Simone and fired a low shot by Segarra to tie the game 5-5 going into halftime.
"It was such an intense game for the entire time," Simone said. "Both teams really rely on our speed, so we were going up and down the field the whole game."
Clamping down
After the Tigers fell behind on a free position goal four minutes into the second half, senior goalie Laura Field and the Tiger defense took control. Field would hold the Cavaliers to one goal in the final 24 minutes of the game, making several of her 13 saves on the afternoon.
"I can't say enough about Laura," Smith said. "She held a great offensive team like Virginia to only seven goals and made a couple of pointblank saves in the last couple minutes."
The Tigers reeled off three goals, including a rocket off the stick of Kenworthy to get the score to 8-6, Princeton. Cavalier Kelly Allenbach then scored with 6:04 remaining to give Virginia some momentum.
But the Tigers' stall offense would take control in the game's waning moments. With time ticking away, that Cavalier momentum would quickly fade as a look of relief began to creep onto the faces of the Tiger players.
"We knew if we could hold the ball for those last five minutes we could win the game," Simone said. "We executed the stall well and when we did turn the ball over we were able to get it back quickly."
Kenworthy finished with three goals, Simone and Smith had two, and Maddox netted one.
After the grueling win over Virginia, the Tigers came out a little tired against No. 17 Cornell (6-1, 1-1 Ivy) yesterday. That early-game lethargy let the Big Red turn the tables on a Tiger team that is usually able to come out and score early and often as Cornell jumped out to a 3-0 lead only four minutes into the game.
Fired up
Head coach Chris Sailer then called a timeout to rally the troops. The pep talk seemed to work as the Tigers went on a 6-0 streak which was punctuated by four goals in a 1:15 stretch.
The Big Red battled back, however, and got the score to 8-7 after attack Sarah Averson fired a shot past Field with 17 minutes left. The strong Tiger defense was able to make that the last goal Cornell would score as the defense of senior Molly Hall, sophomore Brooke Owens and freshman Rachel Becker stymied the Cornell attack and gave the offense a chance to pull away for the final 12-7 tally.
The balanced offense was once again in force as five Tigers — sophomore midfielder Mimi Hammerberg, freshman attack Whitney Miller, Simone, Kenworthy and Maddox — scored two goals each and Smith and sophomore attack Nina Carbone tallied one. Smith also had her first three assists of the season in the last 10 minutes to help the Tigers pull away.
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