After watching her team lose five straight games by one goal, Dartmouth field hockey coach Julie Dayton wanted her team to play well from start to finish against Yale on Saturday.
Apparently, the team took her instructions quite literally.
Dartmouth scored one goal 42 seconds in to the game and its second with only 11 seconds to play as it handed Yale a 2-0 loss for its first victory since opening the season with a 2-1 win over Rhode Island.
During that stretch, Dartmouth lost one game in double overtime and a pair of match-ups in which the winning goal was scored in the waning moments of regulation play.
"People laughed at us because we were 1-5," Kathleen Hickey '96 said. "But our record wasn't really indicative of how we were playing."
Indeed, Dartmouth had been doing everything but getting the ball in the net.
But against Yale, the Big Green wasted little time in overcoming that shortcoming. After controlling the opening hit, Amy Coughlin '96 pushed the ball aggressively up the field and drove all the way to the top of the circle before drilling a pass to Hickey who shoveled the ball passed an out-of-position Yale goalkeeper for her first goal of the season.
"We came out so hungry," Hickey said. "From the opening whistle we just attacked."
It didn't take long for Yale to counterattack. The Eli's swarmed about the Dartmouth goal through much of the game, but could not pump the ball by Lauren Demski '96, who recorded her first shutout of the season.
Demski was aided by what was probably the strongest defensive effort of the year from the Big Green backfield.
But the game wasn't completely sewed up until Kelly Hannigan '97 fed the ball to Sarah Devens '96 at the top of the circle. Devens then pounded her team-leading fourth goal of the season into the net just a few seconds before the end of the game.
The win couldn't come at a better time for the Big Green. The team faces two tough contest as it hosts New Hampshire on Wednesday and Brown on Saturday. The Wildcats are always a strong team, and Brown emerged as a contender in the Ivy League with a 1-0 win over nationally-ranked Princeton on Saturday.
To head into those match-ups with a case of shaken confidence was not what first-year coach Julie Dayton had in mind for a team that is still adjusting to a new coaching staff.
The one Dartmouth player that has seemingly suffered the least from those growing pains is Devens. The second-team All-Ivy selection is emerging as one of the top players in the Ivy League and has scored the majority of her team's goals.
But Devens has by no means been a one-woman show. Dartmouth's defense has not let in more than two goals in any one game, and a young offense has continually pestered opposing goaltenders. Now it's just a matter of keeping the momentum.
