Senior goalkeeper Kelly Baril leads field hockey team in search of championship

Coming off an incredible season that ended in the semifinals of the NCAA tournament last year, senior goalkeeper Kelly Baril will look to lead the Tigers to a national championship this year. After a summer of working with six field hockey camps, she appears to be in good shape and ready to go. The team trained hard for the past couple of weeks, practicing for two hours twice a day and lifting weights for an hour each day as well.

As a senior Baril will be a leader on the team. Her positive attitude and hard work should set a good example for the seven recruited freshmen. Since the team lost no one to graduation last year, it will have much more depth with the seven new players. The team will have very high expectations this year, and Baril will once again be the backbone of the team.

"Everyone from last year's team is back this year. We seniors have been working together for many years, and last year's freshmen now have a year of experience too," Baril said.

"We are very comfortable playing together and we work well with each other on and off the field. We are all working towards the same goal, and that is to win the NCAAs this year."

Baril was named first team All-America last year, recording a .761 save percentage and a 1.31 goals against average. She was also named to the US under-23 National Team. She will look to continue this success in her final season at Princeton and try to lead the Tigers to their ninth straight Ivy League title this year.

"Although our main goal is to win the NCAAs this year, we first have to concentrate on winning the Ivy League in order to get an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament," Baril said.

Princeton will play three Ivy League teams — Yale, Columbia and Dartmouth — in their first four games of the season. The Tigers will play seven games against Ivy League teams this year and 11 games against other teams, eight of which will be against top 10 teams.

This past Saturday the Tigers lost to the US national team, 7-0. Although the score does not show it, Baril played extremely well and gave the Tigers a chance to win with 11 saves. The defense played well in front of Baril, as has been the case the last couple of years.

In the upcoming season Princeton will try to find a way to increase its offense.

"One change that we are making this year involves having four midfielders instead of three. This will give us more offense but we will have to try hard to get back on defense," said Baril.

The start of what should be a very exciting season is this Friday, September 13 when the Tigers face off against a tough Ohio team. This game will test how prepared the Tigers are to start their drive towards a national championship. It will also show them if the new strategy of having more offense will work.

This year's schedule is harder than last year's, but Princeton is more than ready to take on the challenge.