By Elliott Bell
Becky Thorn and Jill Wienecke each scored three goals to lead the Pride past the University of Mass Massachusetts 10-8 on Tuesday at James M. Shuart Stadium.
The Pride is now 1-1 following its loss to Rutgers to open the season last Tuesday. The Minutemen slip to 1-3 with the loss. Against Rutgers the Pride got off to a sluggish start allowing the other team to score the first five goals of the contest.
Head coach Shelley Klaes-Bawcombe made sure her team wouldn’t come out flat again. This time around the Pride came out smoking hot. It jumped out of the gate quickly scoring the first two goals of the contest in the first minute of the game.
Thorn and Wienecke each scored to put the Pride ahead 2-0. UMass answered back as Brianna Bubeck and Tracey Drown were both able to score, and tie up the game 2-2 with 21:27 left in the opening half.
However, the Pride was resilient. Unfazed by the Minutemen’s goals, it answered right back in a big way. The rest of the first half was dominated by the Pride who closed out the stanza on a 6-2 run.
Jen Maget scored off a free position shot at the 20:20 mark to put the Pride ahead for good. Just over a minute later, Catherine Guerriere converted on another free position shot to make it a 4-2 game. A goal from Lindsay Cassell put UMass right back in the thick of things with the score 4-3. But once again, it was Wienecke and Thorn who came through with back-to-back goals to give the Pride a 6-3 advantage with 15:44 on the clock.
Hope Zelinger scored with 10:20 left in the half for UMass, but the Pride answered back 11 seconds later on an unassisted goal by Kimberly Hillier. Mary Romano then tallied her first goal of the year with 2:33 left in the half to put the Pride up 8-4.
The Pride continued its fantastic play by opening the second half with another Wienecke goal, which put it comfortably ahead with 22 minutes to play.
UMass quickly went back to work exposing a shaky Pride defense, and was able to score three goals in the span of nearly four minutes to make the score 9-7.
From that point on the Pride’s defense settled down, and did a good job of keeping the shots off net. Thorn added her third goal of the game to put the team ahead with just 3:15 left in the contest. Zelinger answered back for the Minutemen with 1:42 left in the game pushing the score to 10-8. But that was all they could muster, and the Pride held on for the win.
Lisa Papa came through with seven saves for the Pride, while Joey Rubin had 10 saves for Umass, including eight in the first half. The Pride was able to outshoot UMass 25-19, and won 14 of 20 draw controls.After two games Kimberly Hillier leads the Pride with five points, including three goals and two assists. Thorn and Wienecke are behind her with four points apiece.
The Pride will next be in action when it travels to Cornell to face the Big Red on Friday at 4:30p.m.