It was a game that still has the women's lacrosse team scratching their head, trying to figure out just what happened.
The Big Green came out and took a quick lead just moments into their Ivy League opener against rival Princeton. The lead was short-lived, however, as the second-ranked Tigers shut down the Big Green and went on an offensive scoring binge, thoroughly handling Dartmouth 15-2 Saturday afternoon in Princeton.
The Big Green wasted little time getting on the scoreboard, as senior Captain Maura Schneider's goal two minutes into the game gave the team an early 1-0 lead.
"We came out and scored the first goal, and in the early minutes we were playing with poise and confidence," Weze Shorts '99 said. "After getting the first goal, they were coming down on offense and we would force a turnover and stop them. For the first 10 minutes of the game, it seemed like we were dominating them. I don't know what happened after that."
Right after the 10 minute mark, the Tigers scored four quick goals to take a 4-1 lead before Julia Morrill '98, the Big Green's leading scorer, netted her 14th goal of the season to cut the lead to two. That was the closest Dartmouth would ever come.
"We started off intense, scored a goal, and then with Julia's goal it seemed that we were fighting back, but then they just began to overwhelm us," Allison Wiener '99 said.
Princeton retaliated to the Morrill netter by adding four more goals to give the Tigers an 8-2 lead heading into halftime.
"At halftime, even though we were down by six goals, we, and [Coach] Amy [Patton] believed that we could come back and win," Shorts said. "Six goals in lacrosse is not that large of a deficit, but being a bigger, more experienced team, they continued to win draws and out-hustle us to loose balls on the ground. They were just faster than us on Saturday. It felt like we were chasing them all over the field."
The bleeding continued with the Princeton Tigers scoring seven more goals in the second half as part of an 11 unanswered goal run to send the Big Green back to Hanover with a overwhelming loss in their Ivy League opener.
"We are a young team, half of our team is comprised of freshmen," Wiener said. "I think we have the same speed, skills and talent as Princeton, but they have more game experience. It's just shocking though, I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong."
Dartmouth will try to regain the winning touch it had found before the Princeton defeat during three games this week against the University of New Hampshire, the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, with the latter two games at home next weekend.
"As a freshman, I don't know how to react or what to think, but I do know that we've got three big games this week and that we need to concentrate on winning those and somehow forget about what happened at Princeton," Shorts said.
