Owls break through to narrowly defeat Hoyas

Temple Field Hockey (8-3, 1-1 Big East Conference) defeated Georgetown University (3-8, 0-3 Big East Conference) 1-0 in a defensive battle on Friday afternoon at the Temple Sports Complex. The Owls played a strong game, limiting the Hoyas to just one shot. On offense Temple was only able to capitalize on one of their 15 corner attempts.

KEY PLAYS

• Nine minutes into the second quarter, Hoyas’ fifth-year goaltender Ciara Weets made a save on a deflection shot from Owls’ freshman midfielder Agustina Tucceri to keep the game tied at zero.
• Just five minutes into the fourth quarter, senior goalie Molly Frey stopped the Hoyas only shot of the game to keep the game tied.
• With two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, senior defender McKenna Burkhardt assisted graduate student defender Nienke Oerlemans, who scored the game-winning goal during Temple’s 14th corner attempt of the game. 

THE NUMBERS

• Weets finished with 10 saves.
• Oerlemans finishes with one goal, her second on the season.
• The Owls outshot the Hoyas 22-1.
• Temple had a season high 15 corner attempts, converting on only one.

WORDS FROM THE TEAM

“Georgetown definitely played a very good game,” Oerlemans said. “They had their plan and they analyzed our corners very well so they knew exactly how we set up and what we would be doing.”

“These past couple games have definitely been hard on us not just mentally but physically, especially going to double overtime,” Burkhardt said. “It takes a lot of your body and coming back from that I think it’s really great, especially going in that last two minutes of the game and playing pretty much a full 60 minutes at 100 percent, that’s really hard to do.”

WORDS FROM COACH

“The messaging was clear as a coach, keep doing what you’re doing,” said Owls head coach Michelle Vittese. “Sometimes as a young player you feel like it’s not working just because you’re not scoring, but for us the message was to continue to do what we’re doing.”

ON TAP

The Owls will look to build off the win when they take on City Six opponent Drexel University (6-3, 0-2 Colonial Athletic Association Conference)  on Sunday, Oct. 2 at 1 p.m.