With a four-game winning streak at stake, the field hockey team improved their record to 6-5 with their second straight come-from-behind win.
Sophomore midfielder Nicole Kroener and freshman midfielder Alyssa Delp led the offense, with both scoring two goals in a 5-3 win against Longwood.
“We may have underestimated [Longwood] just a little bit, and we didn’t come out at our full intensity,” Kroener said. “They had decent ball movement, which surprised us a little bit.”
In the fourteenth minute of the game, senior midfielder Jessica Diaz broke the 0-0 tie with an unassisted goal.
After a quiet first half in which there was only one goal scored by both teams, the Temple offense exploded late in the second half with five goals.
Coach Amanda Janney said that at halftime she changed the teams passing strategy to try to get points on the board.
“We kind of changed our strategy of how we were going to pass the ball at half,” Janney said. “The girls did a great job to figure some things out and change some things on their own.”
In the beginning of the second half, the Owls struggled. After a goal off a penalty stroke by Kroener in the first two minutes after halftime, the Temple offense went dry.
Longwood scored twice more on goals by senior defender Nicole Segala and junior midfielder Stacey de Grandhomme to extend their lead to 3-1.
Delp led a comeback in the middle of the second half with two goals within three minutes of each other. Her first goal came in the 56th minute, and the equalizer was set up by an assist by Kroener in the 59th minute.
The game-winning goal came off of Kroener’s stick in the 61st minute.
“I hit the ball from the top of the circle and it ricocheted off someone’s stick, and it went in the goal,” Kroener said about her goal.
With the Owls up 4-3, sophomore Amber Youtz put the game away with an unassisted goal with only five minutes left in the game.
Up next for the Owls is No. 4 Maryland. The team will take on the Terrapins tomorrow at 1:00 pm.
Janney said that defense is the key to coming out of Sunday’s game successfully.
“We need to play really good defense,” Janney said. “It’s important for us to not give up goals too early, and not to wait until 50 minutes into the game for our offense to wake up.”
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