Freshman Joelle van Ierland pushes through the Louisville defense Saturday at Munn field. The Spartans took a 4-1 victory over the Cardinals to start off the season.
Of the four teams participating in the Champions Invitational field hockey tournament this weekend, only MSU managed to stay strictly in the win column.
After dominating No. 14 Louisville, 4-1, Saturday, the MSU field hockey team kept the momentum going through overtime to defeat Ohio, 3-2, Sunday, upping their overall record to 3-0.
“Our strategy going into overtime was to have composure as well as that surprise element,” MSU head coach Rolf van de Kerkhof said. “We have (freshman forward) Angela Pagura, who is excellent and very fit so she can help out and assess situations such as our second corner, which we scored off of after she made a good call analyzing it deep with the first corner we had in overtime.”
After setting the table early in the extra session, senior forward Becky Manning came off the bench to score the winning goal just over three minutes into overtime for the win.
“When I got in there, I just tried to help out just like we always do, and it turned out good,” Manning said. “We’ve been practicing overtime a lot, so we were very well prepared.”
Van de Kerkhof said Pagura and freshman Amanda Huck gave strong performances on the weekend.
“I give a lot of credit to my girls, but indirectly we have to learn from this. We created our own challenges today,” van de Kerkhof said. “That is something that we have to try to limit in the future or avoid if at all possible.”
After allowing Ohio nine shots in the first half while only creating a sluggish three shots themselves, MSU was lucky the half ended at 1-1.
A completely different MSU offense came out controlling the ball in the second half, taking nine shots and only giving up three.
“In halftime we pretty much shared that we were not living up to our game goals offensively and we had to build our attack because pretty much every other ball we had, we gave straight back to Ohio,” van de Kerkhof said. “The second half we were giving up about one out of every four or five, which allowed us to finally generate an attack in numbers and with that enter the circle to shoot the ball and get the goals that we got.”
MSU was lucky to get away with it over the weekend, but the trend of a lagging first half is something MSU is looking to end before Friday’s game against Miami (Ohio).
“There are some kinks to be worked out, which were shown in the first half of both games, and then we were able to overcome them and work it out in the second half of both games where we played outstanding,” Manning said.
MSU will return to action Friday at Ralph Young Field.
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