With yet another offensive spark from an unlikely source, the field hockey team is one step closer to the ultimate prize.
Following runaway victories in the second and third rounds of the NCAA Tournament on Bello Field over the weekend, the nationally ranked No. 4 Jumbos are headed to the Final Four for the second consecutive season, where they'll look to claim the first NCAA team national title by any squad in school history.
"It feels awesome," coach Tina McDavitt said. "It's been great the past two years the way the girls have developed and played as a team. This weekend, I think we came together nicely. It was a total team effort."
Tufts began the weekend with a rain-soaked, 5-1 win over MIT on Saturday and followed by dispatching national No. 9 Skidmore 4-1 yesterday afternoon. Particularly against the Thoroughbreds, the Jumbos received major contributions from their penalty corner unit, led by junior defender Jess Perkins. Her three weekend goals upped her postseason total to five, all off successful corner opportunities.
With the victories, Tufts advances to what promises to be a thrilling national semifinal next weekend in South Hadley, Mass. — which will feature each of the top four teams in the most recent national coaches' poll and four of the last six NCAA champions.
A year removed from the heartbreak of a double-overtime setback in the national title game, the Jumbos are looking to get over the hump.
"I think that last year, we were just really excited to be there," Perkins said. "It was a whole new experience, and we were just excited. This year, we're in it to win it. The goal is to win both games, and it's a little more business this year. It's not so new and we know what to expect. We're really just excited to get out there and play."
"The whole thing was new," senior defender Emma Kozumbo added. "In a way, it was good to not know what to expect because we would just go out there with a blank slate and give it our all. But this year, having experience, we look at the whole thing as a business trip. We know what's expected of us and we know what we have to do to win."
The road to the Final Four began with a bit of déjà vu, as for the second straight national quarterfinal, the Jumbos converted on a go-ahead penalty stroke opportunity. This time, it came off the stick of senior co-captain Margi Scholtes, whose blast 1:27 into the game gave Tufts an immediate 1-0 advantage.
"For some reason, I thought it was going to come down to a stroke, and [yesterday] morning and [Saturday] night, I was definitely thinking about it a lot," Scholtes said. "I knew that the stroke had to get in the goal because it would set the team off on the right foot."
Skidmore responded with a tying goal roughly 15 minutes later, capitalizing on one of their three first-half penalty corner chances. But then the Tufts corner unit went to work, notching two tallies of its own between the 19:10 and 27:27 marks of the first half to put the Jumbos up for good. Both scores came courtesy of Perkins, who entered the postseason with four goals in her previous 52 games.
"We knew [the Thoroughbreds] were a really strong team, so we had to take advantage of our numbers-up situations," Perkins said. "We've been really focused on our corners this year, so it's great to capitalize on them."
The Tufts defense denied Skidmore the opportunity to make a second-half comeback, thwarting seven Thoroughbred corner chances and yielding no shots on goal the entire period. For the game, Skidmore's top two scoring threats — two-time Liberty League Player of the Year Christine Kemp and senior forward Elise Britt — were limited to one shot, none on goal.
Tufts advanced to yesterday's quarterfinal thanks to a convincing second-round win over MIT. Playing under the remnants of Hurricane Ida, the Jumbos pulled away early after receiving a first-half hat trick from senior forward Michelle Kelly.
"We just did a good job of working the ball around the goalie," Kelly said on Saturday. "I just got great passes from [junior forward] Tamara [Brown] and happened to be on that left side and got the job done."
Up next for the Jumbos is a Final Four showdown against national No. 2 Salisbury, which handed previously unbeaten SUNY Cortland its first loss of the season in yesterday's quarterfinals. A perennial powerhouse that won three consecutive national titles between 2003 and 2005, the Seagulls eliminated the Jumbos from the 2007 NCAA Tournament despite being outshot 20-7.
That season's Tufts squad was relatively new to the national stage, appearing in the NCAA Tournament for the first time under McDavitt. But two years and six additional NCAA games later, the Jumbos have a far better sense of what it takes to win this time of year.
"I think we're a totally different team," Kozumbo said. "That game just gave us a lot to build off of, and from my sophomore year to my senior year, we've gained a lot more experience."
"[2007] was the first time anyone on our team had played in NCAAs," Scholtes added. "They scored within the first two minutes on us, and then they got another goal, so from that, we learned that we need to come out ready from the beginning. When the whistle blows, we have to be ready to go."
