It was sibling rivalry at its best.
It was a clash between the Big Green women's soccer team and the Minutewomen from UMass. It was a face-off between two regional titans of the sport. It was a 2-0 upset victory for the Big Green over a previously undefeated team ranked 11th in the nation.
Those are all the basics. Now for the fun stuff.
When the Big Green entered the match they walked onto the field with their leading scorer -- Jenna Kurowski '97. The Minutewomen did the same -- as in they, too, put a Kurowski up front.
Her name was Emma.
Emma and Jenna are sisters.
It was the match the two sisters had been waiting for all their lives. Both entered the match as the leading scorers on their respective teams. Both wanted very much to win. And most of all, neither sibling wanted to lose to the other.
From the start, the sisters tried to go shot for shot. But soon it became clear that there was still a lot for Emma to learn from watching her big sister.
Ten minutes into the match, the older Kurowski took a pass from senior forward Melissa McBean and slid a rocket under a diving UMass keeper to put the Big Green up by one.
Two minutes later, Jenna struck again with a long rocket off the crossbar that dropped into the net to hike the Dartmouth lead to two.
Strong defensive play kept the score locked for the rest of the game. "We had a really good first half," Co-Captain Holly Thomas '97 said. "In the second half, we struggled, but we managed to do things right and hold on to our lead through the end."
For many, a 2-0 loss would have been a tough way to end a sibling reunion. But for Emma Kurowski, it wasn't quite so bad. "[Jenna] is the only person I don't mind losing to," she said.
In the weeks leading up to the game, the locker room chatter from Jenna to her teammates was a half-joking insistence that "we've got to stop Emma." And that much, Dartmouth did.
"They really marked me well," said the younger Kurowski, who is now a freshman at UMass. "It seemed like everywhere I went, I was covered."
The big Kurowski had no such troubles according to Emma. "I think we could have covered [Jenna] better. It seemed like she could just go wherever she wanted with the ball."
Though Jenna's scoring magic has become a very familiar sight for Emma, yesterday was the first time she was victim to her own sister's ruthless goal-scoring.
"As soon as [Jenna] got the ball, I knew that she would score because I've seen her do it so many times before," Emma said. "I think she's one of the best forwards in the country."
The numbers tend to support Emma's view. With her two goals in yesterday's game, Jenna upped her season point total to 27 points in nine games.
The Big Green outshot the Minutewomen, 9-7. Junior keeper Annie Eckstein recorded her first shutout of the year by blocking four shots on goal.
Dartmouth now (7-2 overall, 3-0 Ivy) has now won two games in a row on Garber Field, where UMass has a lifetime record of 116-14-8. Only two other visiting teams have accomplished this feat: the Huskies of UConn and the Badgers of Wisconsin.
The Big Green returns to Chase Field on Sunday after a two-week stretch on the road to take on the Yale Bulldogs at noon.
