Field hockey loses OT thriller to Penn State

Maybe it was the horrible rainy weather. Maybe it was the long bus ride to Penn State for a single night. Or maybe it just wasn't meant to be. Despite a strong fight and gritty play from the Princeton field hockey team, the Nittany Lions of Penn State (6-5) eked out a 1-0 win on a clutch overtime goal Tuesday night at Bigler Field in University Park.

With the loss, the Tigers fell to 2-6 on the season, and remain at 2-1 in Ivy League play. With their win against Columbia over the weekend, the Tigers bounced back from a loss against Dartmouth, their first defeat in Ivy League play in five seasons.

The Tigers knew that they would be facing a formidable opponent when they traveled to Penn State to take on the No. 19 team in the nation. Going into the game, the Tigers had lost to Penn State the last four times the teams had faced one another, with the last meeting coming in the first round of the NCAA tournament in November 2003.

The 2003 NCAA tournament game found the No. 7 Penn State team up against a 10th-ranked Princeton team that had already gone 12-5 in the first season of its new coach, Kristen Holmes-Winn. The record was the best first-year start for a Princeton field hockey coach in the program's history. Not only that, Holmes-Winn had also led the Tigers to their tenth straight Ivy League championship.

The Tigers went into the match against Penn State having been knocked out of the NCAA tournament by that same team in the 2002 season, the first time that they had lost in the first round of tournament play in nine appearances. To say the least, the field hockey team was looking for blood or at least some turning of the tides.

With 11:02 left in the first half of that 2003 Tournament game, Timarie Legel of Penn State scored her 18th goal of the season for Penn State. As the Tigers fought back, it looked as though they would go into halftime by only one goal. However, Karin Grap of Penn State would not let that score stand, and in the final minute of the first half wristed a shot past the Princeton goalie, then-freshman Alison Nemeth, to bump the score to 2-0.

With 11:14 left in that game, the Tigers now trailed Penn State 3-0, having missed out on an opportunity to make the score 2-1 10 minutes into the second half when the team managed to put together a number of penalty corner opportunities. Despite some excellent shooting, Penn State goalie Annie Zinkavich made two diving saves to keep the score steady and keep her team ahead. Grap then banked her second goal after a shot by Penn State's Heather Conroy was blocked and redirected to the right goal post, where Grap gained control of the ball and shot it past Nemeth. Finally, at the 11:14 mark then-junior Lizzie Black scored on a penalty corner situation to bring the Tigers within two at 3-1. However, despite 10 saves in goal by Nemeth and a strong fight from the Tigers, Penn State managed to outshoot Princeton 19-5 and had 13 penalty corners to the Tigers' nine. The Tigers left the game knowing that they had played hard and well, but that it just wasn't enough. Keeping that final loss to the Nittany Lions in mind, the Tigers traveled to Penn State looking once again to turn the tides of their history against the Lions. Despite the long bus ride and the heinous weather, the Tigers got off the bus and went onto the field ready to play and ready to do some damage. And, undeniably, the Tigers put up one of the strongest fights that they could have against a team as strong as Penn State.

Some of Princeton's best play came in the second half near the end of regulation and into the overtime period. Having gone the entire first half without a penalty corner opportunity, in the final eighteen minutes of the game the Tigers managed to string together four penalty corner opportunities.

Princeton continued to put pressure on the Nittany Lion net as the clock ticked down, dominating the field as they had not been able to do in the first half of play.

Penn State outshot the Tigers 20-13 overall, including 12-7 in the exciting second half. However, Princeton goalie Juliana Simon continued to deny the Penn State efforts, banking a season-high eight saves, five of which came in the second half of regulation play. Not only that, despite six second-half penalty corner situations for the Nittany Lions, the game remained knotted at nil.

The two teams then went into overtime play. As the clock ticked down from fifteen minutes towards zero, the Nittany Lions and the Tigers continued to claw and scrape, though the scoreboard remained at 0-0. Then Karin Grap, the Penn State player responsible for two goals in last season's playoff game, found herself in a breakaway situation with just 3:15 remaining in the overtime period.

Grap took a feed from teammate Michele Rigby and managed to push a shot past Simon into the Princeton net, bringing to an end a game that saw many scoring opportunities for both teams but little actual scoring. And just like that, the Tigers found that once again they had put up the good fight but it just had not been enough.