The No. 8 field hockey team seems to have hit its stride. With its first NESCAC win under its belt after Saturday's 2-0 victory over Wesleyan, the Jumbos seem to have put any early season uncertainties behind them and found their formula for success in 2011.
"Our word of the day [Saturday] was ‘first,'" senior co-captain midfielder Lindsay Griffith said. "We focused on first touch, being first to the ball, first to score. Getting our first NESCAC win was the sum of all those little efforts. It's a great accomplishment to come away with."
Beside focusing on being "first," each game the Jumbos aim to score in the first five minutes, and for the second time in the past week, they succeeded. At just 32:59 of the first half, Wesleyan's junior goalie Tori Redding covered the ball on the goal line and the referee signaled for a Tufts penalty stroke. Senior co-captain defender Taylor Dyer stepped to the line and beat Redding on the left side of the cage for the early 1-0 lead. The point not only established Tufts as the dominant team on the day, but also seemed to lift any traces of disappointment left over from last week's penalty stroke loss to Middlebury.
Arguably even more encouraging was how the second point was notched. Just five minutes later, Tufts earned a corner and set up with dominant numbers over the Cardinals. Redding was able to reach the initial shot, but junior inserter Kelsey Perkins collected the rebound and slammed it home for the 2-0 lead at 28:04, a margin that would hold up for the rest of the game.
"It's great that we scored early," junior midfielder Rachel Gerhardt said. "Now our focus is to just improve on that and work on putting more goals in throughout the entire 70 minutes, so when it comes down to those last two minutes, we have no doubt in our minds how the game is going to end."
Though the outcome never seemed in any serious doubt, Gerhardt speaks to the potential danger of letting a team back into a game late. Tufts held the lopsided advantage in shots, 27-8, and corners, 17-3, but the Cardinals adapted quickly in the second half, forcing senior goalkeeper Marianna Zak to make two saves. The Cardinals' defense in the second half also looked more like the unit that held defending national champion Bowdoin scoreless for 68 minutes a week earlier after being fairly porous in the first.
"Going into the second half with a 2-0 lead is always difficult," Griffith said. "Wesleyan was very much still in the game and they came out playing like it. Their energy was higher than ours and we got caught on our heels at first. It's definitely something we as a team need to work on. We want to win the game but we also want to win each half."
Overall, Tufts was the better team on Saturday and it showed. Though Tufts has bested Wesleyan in all of the teams' eight meetings since 2006, the Jumbos have made their statement to the NESCAC this season and look primed for another run at the conference crown.
"The NESCAC is one of the toughest conferences in the nation and we're proud to be a part of it," Griffith said. "We're taking it one game at a time and just focusing on improving our game every time we step on the field. No matter who our opponent is, our goal is to play Tufts field hockey and the rest will hopefully fall into place."
Though the team will not be back in conference action until next Saturday, it will host UMass Dartmouth on Wednesday with a chance to notch another valuable win. The Corsairs have never beaten the Jumbos in the four-year history of the matchup, but they play a fast, scrappy game that conflicts with Tufts' style. The game — which marks the team's last home contest until Oct. 2 — should provide good variety for the defense in preparation for a three-game stretch away from Bello Field.
"Our biggest goal [for Wednesday] is to play even better than we did on Saturday," Gerhardt said. "We want to build on our cohesiveness as a team and put more goals in, obviously, especially capitalizing on corners. We are just warming up with our team meshing together and it is exciting to think about where we can get if we continue to focus on our skills as a team."
