The Elizabethtown College field hockey team was attempting to win their first ever conference title this past Saturday when they took on Messiah College in the Commonwealth Conference championship game.
The Blue Jays were trying to deny No. 15 Messiah of their stranglehold on the Commonwealth in which the Falcons had won six straight conference championships. Though Etown scored the game’s first two goals and headed into halftime with a 2-0 lead, three second-half goals by the Falcons erased Etown’s lead. The No. 1 seeded Blue Jays were unable to find the back of the net for the duration of the second half, giving Messiah their seventh championship with a 3-2 victory.
The Blue Jays beat Messiah two weeks earlier in front of a packed crowd at Wolf Field on senior day by a score of 3-1. The two teams entered halftime knotted up at one, but Etown was able to pull away from the Falcons with two second half goals. Unfortunately, the Blue Jays were unable to repeat this feat in the championship contest.
The conference’s top two seeded teams battled one another back and forth with little offense coming in the first ten minutes of the game. There were no shots taken by either team until the 8:36 mark of the first half.
Junior Kaylee Werner was the first to find the back of the net for the Blue Jays off a corner from junior defender Emily Mason. Mason’s initial hit found Werner at the top of the circle, where she then passed to sophomore Lisa Foose. The midfielder then passed back to Werner who rocketed a shot passed Messiah goalie Molly Gebrosky to put the Blue Jays on the board.
Etown’s defense had a strong showing in the game’s first 35 minutes. The Blue Jays did not allow a shot until the 12th minute of play. The Falcons were unable to generate any real scoring opportunities in the first half despite having three penalty corners.
After the slew of Messiah corners resulted in no goals, Etown senior Casey Fletcher took advantage of an open lane off a pass from sophomore Andrea Keady and knocked a shot past a diving Gebrosky to double the Blue Jays’ lead to 2-0. The goal, which occurred with less than eight minutes to go in the half, was Fletcher’s seventh on the season.
Etown’s leading goal scorer of the season, sophomore Jacki Hikes, almost had her 18th goal of the season just over a minute into the second half. The Messiah goalie was able to make the save on the only shot she would face in the second half. From that point on, the momentum had seemed to sway to the Messiah bench as the Falcons took full advantage of their opportunities.
One of Messiah’s top offensive threats, Moriah Pfautz, got the Falcons on the board in the 44th minute when she maneuvered her way through the Blue Jay defense to beat junior goalie Marlena Johnson to get the Falcons within one.
The two teams battled for possession for the next 15 minutes of the contest until Messiah’s Celina Nissley took a pass from teammate Becky Ely from inside the circle, knocking a shot in the bottom corner of the goal to tie the game up at 2-2 at the 58:41 minute mark.
Only five minutes later, Emily Bower found Pfautz inside the circle to put the Falcons up with her second score of the day, which would turn out to be the eventual game-winning goal.
Messiah was able to ward off a late Blue Jay rally in the remaining minutes of the game to claim its seventh straight Commonwealth Conference Championship and 12th in the last 14 years. The Falcons will now face off against Catholic University in the first round of the NCAA Division III tournament.
The Blue Jays, who were in the final for the second straight season, did not receive an at-large bid, ending Etown’s season. With only the loss of two seniors, look for the Blue Jays to compete for another championship in their first season in the Landmark Conference next year.
