It's always sweet to win a championship, especially at home. Winning it is even better if it gets you a bid to the NCAA Championship. The women's water polo team was aiming to do just that this weekend, with the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Eastern Championships at DeNunzio Pool. However, the results were disappointing.
Coming into the tournament after failing to defend the Eastern Conference Athletic College title two weeks ago and the Southern Championship last weekend, a demoralized Princeton team attempted to obtain the only regional title it hasn't won in more than two years. Last year, the Tigers suffered a painful loss to Brown in overtime.
Things began as expected: with a No. 3 seed for the championship, Princeton was placed with Harvard and Bucknell in the first round. In an extremely tight game in which the Tigers had only a one-goal lead for most of the match, Princeton overcame the Crimson during the opening day of competition.
A crucial save by freshman goalie Madeline McCarthy kept the Tigers alive when the score was 7-6 with the clock expiring. Immediately, senior utility Cassie Nichols played the ball in front of the net to junior two-meter Jenny Edwards, who one-timed it into the net to increase the Princeton lead to 8-6. Nichols added the final goal of the match as the Tigers picked up the 9-6 victory.
Trouble began the second day. The first game's outcome was an easy 11-5 win over Bucknell, a team Princeton defeated several times this season. Nevertheless, things started getting a little more complicated as the Tigers were to play Hartwick in the semifinals. Two weeks ago, the Hawks defeated Princeton to win ECACs.
The game was indeed a battle and the teams went into the fourth quarter even at 8-8. Hartwick converted on two man-up opportunities to open a 10-8 lead three minutes into the final quarter. The Tigers turned the ball over on their own man-up opportunity and Hartwick's Megan Thompson netted her second goal of the period to give the Hawks an 11-8 advantage. Nichols added one goal for the Tigers with two minutes, 21 seconds remaining on the clock, but that was all the Tigers would get as they fell and lost the opportunity to get to the NCAA Championships.
In the other semifinal, a tremendously intense game, Michigan defeated Indiana 8-7 in the ninth period (the fifth overtime), with 11 players scoring in the match.
Sunday, the third and final day of competition, had plenty of tight games. Most important was the finals, in which Michigan again had to go into overtime in order to defeat Hartwick. By the end of the third quarter, when the score was 4-2 Michigan, fans were already proclaiming the Wolverines' victorious.
However, the Hawks came from behind to tie the game with 1:06 to go in the fourth quarter. Just two minutes before, Hartwick had missed a crucial penalty shot. An exciting match ended in the seventh period, in sudden-death overtime, with a mistake by the Hawk keeper who had played a great game before that, saving two penalty shots.
In the third-place game, Princeton dropped its final contest of the season to Indiana, 11-10. The Tigers opened a 2-1 lead going into the second quarter but the Hoosiers pulled the score even as the teams entered halftime at 3-3. The Hoosiers scored six goals in the third quarter to open a 9-6 lead entering the final quarter and the Tigers were never able to catch-up.
With the loss, Princeton finished in fourth place and wrapped up its season at 23-11.
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