The No. 4 field hockey team took the field on Tuesday night looking like it had some aggression to burn. Coming off their first loss of the season to then-unranked Trinity, the team set out to take Gordon by storm. And, with the 8-0 romp, any doubts of the team's confidence being rattled were quickly erased.
"I think that Tuesday was a great win, and we were all a lot more fired up for it than I think we would've been had we won on Saturday," senior midfielder Tess Guttadauro said. "It's one of my favorite quotes that, ‘It's not how hard you fall, but it's how fast you get up,' and I think the team really took that to heart … and if anything, we're that much more motivated. It does take a little pressure off to not be undefeated, and we're just so determined to make the rest count."
"We talk a lot about how it can be really easy to hit highs and lows after big wins or losses," junior defender Taylor Dyer added. "Our coach [Tina McDavitt] tells us how a team will beat a really good team and lose to a weak team after or will lose a close game and come up big the next game. We really wanted to focus on that: bouncing back. There's nothing we can do about last Saturday's game except make a statement about the rest of the season."
And make a statement they did. In the seventh shutout of the season, the Jumbos defense denied the Fighting Scots a single penalty corner or shot on goal. Meanwhile, on the other end of the field, the offense racked up 18 corners, 40 shots and 8 goals by 6 different players.
In familiar fashion, senior forward Tamara Brown notched the seventh hat trick of her career, but the Jumbos first got on the board thanks to a contribution from an unlikely source. Just three minutes into the game, Tufts earned a penalty corner from the left side. Dyer stepped up to the striking circle and put a shot on goal. Seconds later, she heard the backboard ring with the sounds of her first collegiate goal.
It was all downhill from there for Fighting Scots, as the Jumbos went on to score three more times before the half was over. The next two came from Brown, who was fed by senior Melissa Burke on the first and sophomore Lia Sagerman on her second. Then, with 14 minutes remaining in the first half, Sagerman tallied a goal of her own, redirecting a penalty corner shot from junior Lindsay Griffith.
In the second half, Tufts did not allow even a hint of a comeback. Just 1:06 after the break, senior co-captain Jess Perkins put a shot into the back of the net after collecting Guttadauro's corner insertion.
While continuing to control the pace of play, Tufts scored again 13 minutes later when Brown found the back of the net for the third time, after senior co-captain Amanda Roberts sent her a clean assist.
With everything quiet on the defensive end, Tufts left most of the starting offensive unit in the game, hoping to improve upon the poor finishing that plagued it over the weekend. On cue, the forward lines continued to deliver. Griffith sent the bench into a frenzy as she scored her first goal of the season on a Guttadauro insert assist. Then, to complete the drubbing, Guttadauro sent a loose penalty corner ball past Gordon's exhausted freshman goalkeeper Anna Bury for the 8-0 lead.
"It was so nice to see all our corner practice come together," Guttadauro said. "We had gone out earlier in the week, outside of practice time, to work on it because we were seeing against Trinity and tougher teams [that] our only scoring opportunities may come from corners. I think it really was the key to our success on Tuesday."
The game was a good round of target practice for the offense and a huge opportunity for depth development on the defensive end. After earning yet another shutout — the second one in which the Jumbos' goalkeeping duo of starting junior Marianna Zak and first-year Katie Stuntz did not face a single shot — the back line must gear up for a Williams squad that will visit Bello Field for Saturday's Parents Weekend clash.
"I think the defense needs to keep doing what we're doing and building on the positives," Guttadauro said. "We've done a really good job of communicating this year, and it's at the point now where we know where each other are going to be on the field, and we truly are a fully functioning system. … The reason our defense is so good is that we work so well together, and that will be so valuable against a strong offensive team like Williams."
Though Williams sits in ninth place in the NESCAC at 1-6 in the league, nationally ranked No. 5 Bowdoinbarely escaped the Ephs on Saturday, scoring late for a 1-0 win. The Williams attack is something to be reckoned with, and the Jumbos will have to continue to improve their own attack in order to cut Williams out of the equation early and send a message to the Polar Bears, who will fight to defend their NESCAC lead at Tufts next Friday night.
"The one thing we're really focusing on is playing our game," Dyer said. "We are working on not adapting to other teams' styles of play but just playing the way that we know how — the way that has been successful for us in the past. So, obviously we need to be aware of how Williams plays and make necessary adjustments, but we really want to control the pace and style that we're comfortable with — and know how to win with."
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