The Dartmouth women's lacrosse team kicked off its Ivy League season at Scully-Fahey Field with an up-and-down weekend. The Big Green fell to Yale 6-5 on Saturday before rebounding with a 14-6 trouncing of Columbia on Sunday.
The weekend dropped Dartmouth six spots in the national rankings to No. 19. After starting the season ranked third in preseason polls, the Big Green, playing below expectations, is in danger of dropping out of the rankings.
The Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association only has 20 spots in its weekly poll. Dartmouth's record now stands at 4-3 (1-1 Ivy).
Big Green head coach Amy Patton said her team has learned it must play its best to beat the kind of competition it has faced lately. "We can't play average and win games," she said. "We didn't even play average [against Yale]."
Dartmouth jumped on the Bulldogs early, leading 3-1 before Yale scored a pair of goals before halftime. The team couldn't regroup at the break and Yale continued its run, eventually scoring four unanswered goals and taking a 5-3 lead.
Jen Pittman '07 then halted the Big Green scoring drought emphatically, tying the game at five with her third and fourth goals of the weekend. The game remained deadlocked until late in the game, when Bulldog freshman Jenn Warden bounced the game-winning goal past Willis with only 19 seconds left on the clock.
While the weekend was a tough start to the league schedule, the Big Green did have some highlights. Dartmouth played solidly as a team against Columbia, when Kristen Barry '08 scored four goals and had an assist to lead the team in scoring.
The head coach appeared relatively pleased with the Big Green's turnaround against the Lions. "We really just went back to basics," Patton said. "We're a team that is very skilled. With a very good team it's really easy to forget about basics. We've proven to ourselves that if we do the basics, we can win."
Casey Hazel '06 had three goals in the first 13 minutes of the Columbia game on Sunday, giving her a hat trick by the half. Dartmouth led 8-3 at the intermission.
Annie Leibovitz '06, Sarah Szefi '07 and Pittman each scored two goals, and Whitney Douthett '07 scored the Big Green's other goal.
Szefi had two assists, while Douthett, Hazel and Leibovitz notched one apiece against the Lions.
Dartmouth goalkeeper Devon Willis '06 recorded nine saves. Columbia used two goalies that combined to allow 14 goals while saving nine shots.
While downing Columbia provided some comfort, Patton still expressed disappointment with the loss to the Bulldogs. "Yale was a really difficult loss for us, especially since it was our Ivy opener and on our home field," she said.
The team echoed its coach's frustration with the Yale loss, but expressed some satisfaction with the squad's rebound the following day against Columbia.
"It was very important to rebound and beat Columbia," Leibovitz said. "We needed to know we could right the ship and turn things around right away."
Patton gave credit to a return of focus for her team's reverse of fortunes. "We have to be more concerned about us," she said. "In some of these past games we've been more concerned about our opponents."
Dartmouth can move itself ahead again in the rankings if it can take down No. 16 Stanford. The teams meet at Scully-Fahey Field today at 3 p.m.
"Stanford's a good team, and we're going to have a battle on our hands," Patton said.
