Schmidt earns third POY honor

Though Princeton dropped its first two matches of the season to No. 16 American and No. 6 Penn State, it recovered with a four-game winning streak to begin Ivy League play before falling to No. 2 Maryland on Sept. 26. Three days later, the Tigers suffered what was perhaps the low point in their season, losing a heartbreaker to Cornell at home in the final minute of regulation, 4-3, in what was their first Ivy League defeat since 2004.

Instead of allowing the Big Red setback to derail its championship hopes, however, Princeton responded forcefully and decisively, reeling off nine straight victories to close out the regular season and erase any doubts as to its Ivy League primacy. The highlight of the Tigers’ season came in the second of these nine games, when they knocked off No. 3 Connecticut, 2-1, in a thrilling victory that was Princeton’s first in six tries against the Huskies. Junior defender Holly McGarvie tied the score at one early in the game, and Schmidt added another off a penalty corner in the second half to cap the comeback and send the Tigers to their only win over a nationally ranked team all season.

“Beating UConn this year was definitely one of our best moments as a team,” said sophomore attack Tina Bortz, who was the team’s scoring leader with 12 goals and eight assists. “We came together with so much energy — we all wanted it so bad and knew we were good enough to compete with such a highly ranked team … I think that really showed we can not only play with some of the best teams in the country, but we can beat them.”

A win over Penn on Nov. 9 sealed Princeton’s place atop the Ivy League standings for the third year in a row, earning it a spot in a play-in game for the NCAA tournament. The Tigers’ opponent was Atlantic-10 champion UMass, and though Princeton dominated play for most of the match’s 70 minutes, UMass managed to survive a 13-shot onslaught and come away with a 2-1 win, ending the Tigers’ season two goals short of the national tournament.

Schmidt, who was Princeton’s only senior and was once again named Ivy League Player of the Year at season’s end, was supported by a strong class of eight juniors anchoring the team on offense and defense, a frightening thought for opponents heading into next season. Sophomore goaltender Cindy Wray made 17 starts in the Princeton net in her first season as the number-one goalie and looked solid in posting an 11-5-0 record, including four shutouts.

Returning the vast majority of their players next season for the second year in a row, and adding seven freshmen and two familiar faces — junior defender Micaela Vie Brock and junior midfielder Nicole Ng, neither of whom played in 2007 — the Tigers are, as always, expected to do great things in 2008, building on their success from this past season.

“We have so much momentum coming into [the 2008] season from training this spring and leftover frustration with how our season ended this year, we’re going to be training harder than ever to reach our goals this season, which we’ve set higher than ever,” Bortz said.