Field hockey drops fourth straight game
Central Michigan field hockey was aggressive on offense with 14 shots in their 4-3 defeat to the Saint Francis Red Flash in overtime.
The Chippewas (1-5) dropped their fourth straight game against the Red Flash (2-3) but they produced more offense than they did against Pacific on Thursday.
Scoring was opened by the Red Flash as freshman midfielder Agustina Deharbe deflected a shot off a Chippewa defender and into the net with 2:32 to play in the opening frame.
The second half was a offensive onslaught as sophomore midfielder Taryn Damm notched her first goal of the season on a one-timer off a pass from sophomore back Anna Riesenberg just 46 seconds into the second half.
Late in the second half, the Chippewas and Red Flash traded goals to bring the score to 3-2. The tally that brought the game to overtime stemmed from a triad of corners for the Red Flash, the latter two were untimed corners. Senior midfielder Hannah Retherford found the ball in the scrum and fired it past Chippewas senior goalkeeper Lily Amadio to tie the game at three goals apiece and send the game to overtime.
Head coach Catherine Ostoich delivered a message to her team before the extra frame that, “We did not lose this game,” Ostoich said. “You saw us walking off and it almost looked like we had lost. My message was, ‘We are in this game and you’re going to go earn a corner in the first minute,’ which we did.”
After the Chippewas strong play on offense, the defense fell apart and Red Flash senior midfielder Brianna Govia found the ball in the Chippewa crease and buried the game 4:56 into the extra frame.
“It hurts,” Ostoich said. “I wish I could take this from them so they don’t have to experience it, but at the same time, they need to experience this so then we can do everything it takes to not have this feeling again.”
Ostoich praised her team in defeat as they made a lot of changes in just a 24 hour turnaround.
“The team played so well,” Ostoich said. “There were so many people that stepped up and made changes.”
The Chippewas look to rebound from their loss at 12 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 9 at the Indiana University Field Hockey Complex in Bloomington, IN against the Stanford Cardinal.
