Dartmouth's (1-6, 1-1 Ivy) victory over Brown( 1-6, 0-2 Ivy) evens out its conference record after losing to Princeton. (Results of Sunday's contest against Holy Cross was not available as of press time.)
After Dartmouth lost five straight games to open the schedule, co-captain Kristen McCormick '09 saw Saturday's win as a product of the team's growth.
The Big Green lost its first four games by a combined 14-0 before falling to the University of Vermont, 4-3, in overtime on Wednesday.
"We've hit the ground running and we've never stopped," McCormick said Saturday. "We just kept plugging away and plugging away, and finally we got results. We were building up. We lost by a lot, and we lost by a little less, and then we lost in overtime, and we went into overtime here and we won, so we've been moving up the whole time."
Until the final tally, the game against the Bears looked uncannily like Wednesday's overtime loss against UVM.
In each game, an aggressive Big Green team recorded more than double the shots of its opponent and held the lead for much of the second half, only for Dartmouth to lose its advantage in the last moments of the game and be forced to go into overtime.
The win this time, according to McCormick, is a result of teamwork and a representation of the team's real potential.
"We were finally on Wednesday able to show everybody how Dartmouth field hockey plays," McCormick said. "That's what we look like at practice, and today we were so excited about that, and so excited to play like that and remembering how much fun it was to play like that on Wednesday, and how much more fun it would be to win. Everybody just turned it on, it was a complete team effort."
Dartmouth held the advantage for much of the game, but two goals by Brown's Katie Hyland in the waning moments of regulation brought the score to 4-4 and forced overtime.
After Brown's Leslie Springmeyer opened the scoring with a strike 13:06 into the first half, the Big Green took the lead into halftime by scoring three straight goals.
Within two minutes of each other, Katie Nice '11 and Kelly Hood '12 gave the Big Green a 2-1 lead with under four minutes to play in the first half.
With 38 seconds remaining in the stanza, Rebecca Sobel '11 raised the Dartmouth advantage to two with a tally off an assist by Kerry Bracco '11.
Just under eight minutes after the Bears' Tacy Zysk scored a goal 9:37 into the second half to cut the Big Green's lead to 3-2, McCormick connected for a goal off a pass from Virginia Peisch '11 to bring Dartmouth's lead back to two. The tally was McCormick's first collegiate goal.
Dartmouth kept Brown goalies Lauren Kessler and Caroline Washburn busy all day. The Big Green outshot the Bears, 30-14. Dartmouth also held a 10-8 advantage on penalty corners earned.
As for strategy going into the team's upcoming contests, McCormick reports that the team will keep their enthusiasm up while continuing to stay serious and aggressive.
"We don't want to go into overtime every time we play," McCormick said after the game Saturday. "When we wanted it, when we really wanted it more than Brown, that's when we kept it up in their end. We kept the shots coming. Definitely tomorrow [Sunday's contest against Holy Cross] we don't want to get too confident, we don't want to settle. For tomorrow's game, we'll probably just focus on staying focused, and really just making sure that we're paying attention to detail out on the field."
Dartmouth fell to Holy Cross, 3-2, Sunday in Hanover. The Big Green will host the University of Pennsylvania on Saturday, Oct. 4 at noon.
