Mothers everywhere worry about their children's teeth on Halloween. But this year the mothers of women's soccer could rest easy, as it was toothpaste and not any candied treat that gave Princeton a nasty trick on Oct. 31.
Everything was going according to plan, until Halloween. In an active Fall Break, playing four games over eight days, they were almost perfect, clinching an outright Ivy League title. But they ultimately saw the end to a 10-game winning streak against an unranked opponent.
Yesterday at Colgate (11-6-1 overall, 5-1-1 Patriot League), No. 8 Princeton (14-2-0 overall, 6-0-0 Ivy League) played its heart out for almost 100 minutes just to taste defeat for the first time since a mid-September loss to Wake Forest.
Great efforts by both defenses and goalkeepers kept the game scoreless throughout regulation. In each half, the favored Tigers came out strong, controlling the ball and putting pressure on the Raider defenders, with no luck. Toward the end of each period, Colgate returned the favor, making its own unsuccessful advances.
Moving into overtime, after several minutes of back-and-forth action Princeton could see the light at the end of the tunnel when senior forward Esmeralda Negron loosed a bullet towards the Raider goal, just to see it sail high and rebound off the crossbar. That shift in momentum was reflected on the field, as Colgate immediately took control and went on a run towards the Tiger goal. With 2:57 left on the clock, Raider phenom Franny Iacuzzi found nylon to end the game in Colgate's favor.
The Tigers started their week off with action against perennial rival Harvard (7-5-2, 3-2-0) at home on Lourie-Love Field on Saturday, Oct. 23. Coming into the game, the Crimson had held a mysterious power over the Tigers in their lair, not having lost at Princeton since 1992.
For the first 89 minutes of regulation, it looked like that streak was going to stick around for another year. Harvard's Brittany Meeks scored an unassisted goal in the opening minutes of the second half to put them up 1-0, a lead which persisted until the waning seconds of the game. With 41 seconds on the clock, however, junior midfielder Emily Behncke found a hole in the previously invulnerable Crimson defense to leave the game tied when time expired. That goal was the first scored by Princeton at home against Harvard since 1994.
The first 10-minute overtime period was quiet, but the second saw the action start to increase again in this tense rivalry. Junior goalie Emily Vogelzang kept up her impressive play to keep the Tigers in the game. Finally, with 1:31 on the clock, Behncke again stepped up, finding Negron for the game-winning goal.
Four days later, Princeton gave Syracuse (8-9-2 overall, 2-7-1 Big East) a warm welcome to beautiful central Jersey, as the Tigers soundly beat the Orangemen, 3-1, despite a school-record 17-save performance by the Syracuse goalie. Behncke scored twice, including the first goal just eight minutes into the game, and Negron scored once, as Princeton extended its winning streak to nine games, and its school-record home winning streak to 13.
On Friday, Oct. 29, the Tigers hit the road once again, traveling to Cornell (4-10-2, 1-5-0) with a chance to clinch an outright Ivy League title, their fourth in the past five years. Suffice it to say they took care of business, thrashing the Big Red 7-0 in their most-lopsided win of the year.
Goals were scored by Behncke, freshman midfielder Diana Matheson, and sophomore forward Amanda Ferranti, but the story of the game was Negron. With three goals, Negron broke a trio of the most impressive team records on the books. Her season goal total was raised to 14, surpassing the mark set in 1981 by Susan Mooney. Her season point total reached 36, moving past Linda Deboer's 1982 standard of 31.
Most impressive, she became the school's all-time leading scorer with 96 career points, and tied Deboer for all-time goals, with 41.
Clinching the title was the culmination of a long season's work, and was an important goal the team had been seeking for the past year since losing the crown to Dartmouth in 2003. With that accomplished, their sights are set on a bigger title: the NCAA championship.
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