By: Emma Gonzalez
Contributor
After a long-fought battle, the field hockey team fell 5-2 against Pace University on Sept. 23.
This is the second consecutive NE10 loss for the Owls, leaving the season score at a 3-4. The Owls managed to push and had a couple of breakthroughs during the game but were ultimately unable to get ahead of Pace.
“It’s always very hard,” Head Coach Kelley Frassinelli said. “We’ve been doing a lot of good work, and I think that tonight we just weren’t making the connections that we normally make.”
Pace had an early start to the game, scoring once in the first quarter, then adding to that advantage with a second score in the second quarter.
Although given four penalty corners in the second quarter, the Owls were unable to find that goal.
In the third and fourth quarters, the energy shifted, the Owls regaining momentum, which led them to make some good passes and reaching Pace’s goalpost more frequently.
“I knew they were going to come out hard and play with their bodies, I just knew we needed to work as a unit,” middle Kyla Hart-Perron, a senior, said.
Despite giving up a third goal in the third quarter, the Owls finally found a breakthrough when middle Isabella Taylor, a junior, made a 30-yard pass through traffic to forward Keana Criscuolo, a junior, who was at the front of the goal and scored, closing the gap to a 3-1.
“One big thing is that they didn’t give up,” Frassinelli said, “you know you’re in a game and yeah, the score matters, but it’s how you play that game.”
In the beginning of the fourth quarter, Criscuolo found an opportunity to shoot at the goal, which ended up just a bit wide.
Pace managed to score two more goals in the fourth quarter, one defensively blocked by Hart-Perron before being hit into the back of the net only moments later.
Towards the end of the game, Criscuolo was able to score a second goal for the Owls, this being her ninth season goal, and her fourth game this season scoring multiple goals in a game.
“It felt really nice to score the second goal; I think it showed the team and helped the team know that it’s not over until the clocks finished,” Criscuolo said.
Even with the strong finish, there was not enough time for the Owls to bounce back and defeat Pace.
“There’s a lot to learn from this game, a lot of the technical things that we have to clean up and work on for our next game, we’re going to see them again this season, so hopefully we have a different outcome with that,” Criscuolo said.
The Owls were determined and still have time this season to apply what they have learned from matches like this to future games.
“It’s not failure, it’s learning,” Frassinelli said, “what we learn from this and how we go to the next thing, one big thing is that they didn’t give up, and that’s huge.”
