The Elizabethtown College field hockey team lost their match against Catholic University on Saturday, Sept. 8. The score was 4-0.
The weak start to the season has hardly left the women of the Elizabethtown College field hockey team disappointed in the loss. However, their disappointment is not attributed to the performance of the team. “We never gave up … I feel that really shows how abnormal our players are because we didn’t give in to them—even for a second,” senior goalie Lindy Hamp said.
Catholic, which is located in Washington, D.C., is currently ranked as the number 11 team in the nation.
Three women of the team, seniors Hamp, Samantha Earle and Emily Butler, agreed that the loss could be attributed to the strengths of the opposing team and not to the weaknesses of the Etown team. “They were a really strong team … so it wasn’t our best game,” Earle said. “All of their goals were legitimate,” Hamp added.
One of the difficulties of the game was the loss of the team’s center defender, sophomore Emily Mason. Mason had to be excused from the game at halftime to attend a wedding. “The defense … we work together and it’s sort of like an unspoken kind of relationship and so when we have to lose somebody — especially in the middle of a tough game, it makes it [so that] we have to work much harder,” Hamp said.
When asked about significant players in the game, the women unanimously indicated that forward Nadine Yunginger had performed exceptionally well.
The women spoke optimistically of their team’s performance in this season’s upcoming game against Susquehanna University. “Susquehanna is not a threat,” Hamp said. Susquehanna is a regular opponent in women’s field hockey, and the women described their previous games with Susquehanna as being easy games.
The next game will be hosted by Etown on Wednesday, Sept. 12 at 5 p.m. at Wolf Field.
Butler remarked that this year’s team is strong — perhaps stronger than they have been in the past. Before the loss on Saturday, the team had not lost a game yet this season. Some of the teams that the team lost to last season were Messiah College, Catholic University and Franklin and Marshall College — teams that Earle remarked were “nationally-ranked teams that should have beaten us.” All of these losses were one-goal games. “We … [had] seven losses, but all of our losses were ‘good’ losses … I was very satisfied with our season,” Earle said.
“We’ve adjusted well,” Hamp said, regarding the loss of last year’s seniors and the addition of this year’s first-year players. Hamp explained that this is not an easy task to accomplish because of the short amount of time the team has to bond and learn to work together. The team only has about two weeks before the first game of the season to prepare for the season. “Everyone meshes pretty well,” Butler said.
“Personally, I am confident for this year. 10-7 is good, but I think we can do better than that and I expect us to do better this year,” Hamp said.
