Owls defeat Bears in defensive battle

Temple Field Hockey (11-4, 3-2 Big East Conference) defeated Brown University (8-4, 1-3 Ivy League) 3-1 in a back-and-forth defensive battle on Sunday afternoon. Owls’ freshman forward Victoria Whitehead sent a pass into the box for  senior forward Megan Phillips, who deflected it in the net, putting Temple up 2-1.

KEY PLAYS

• Seven minutes into the first quarter, Temple junior midfielder Mrythe Schuilenburg scored her first goal of the season to put the Owls up 1-0.
• A minute later, Brown freshman forward Lexi Pellegrino scored her first goal of the season to cut the Owls’ lead back to one.
• With 39 seconds remaining in the third quarter, Temple senior goaltender Molly Frey came up with a diving save, on the Bears’ second penalty corner attempt of the game, to keep the Owls in the lead.
• After a Temple penalty corner, graduate student Nienke Oerlemans scored on a rebound to put the Owls up 3-1 with just less than seven minutes left.

THE NUMBERS

• Frey finished with two saves, upping her season total to 39.
• Schuilenburg finished with one goal, her fourth of the season.
• Phillips finished with one goal, her first of the season.
• Temple finished with eight penalty corner attempts and were able to convert on their second to last one.

WORDS FROM THE TEAM

“We kept fighting even when they scored,” Oerlemans said. “We just kept going, we really did not want to lose this game. They played really well but we wanted to win very badly in the end.”

“We were at the beginning especially very disciplined,” Schuilenburg said. “We were doing what we could and taking care of our own jobs, doing the simple things, trying to connect with the forwards and building the connection between different lines.”

WORDS FROM COACH

“I’m just happy with the results today to be able to perform really well,” said head coach Michelle Vittese. “They have new coaches here, they were physical and they were gritty. They did whatever they could to try to obviously keep the contest going in their direction but just for us, it is just about building on these performances that we continue to put out and managing and adapting to what’s in front of us.”

ON TAP

The Owls will look to build off their win when they take on Big East rival and No. 14 Old Dominion University (11-2, 4-1 Big East Conference) on Oct. 21 at 2 p.m. at Howarth Field.