Knights looking to put rough season behind them

Coming off of a 14-6 campaign in 2008, the Rutgers women’s field hockey team knew it would be a challenge to replicate its success in 2009.
With the departure of both their leading goal scorer in Amy Lewis and their starting goalkeeper Lauren DeCerbo in the offseason, the Scarlet Knights faced a formidable challenge in a conference where three out of seven teams were ranked in the national top-15.
After an emotional season, the Knights won only two games, finishing the year 2-16 with a winless record in conference.
“It was a disappointing year,” said Rutgers head coach Liz Tchou. “I don’t think the record showed what kind of a team we are. I think we could have turned a lot of those losses into wins.”
The Knights struggled at the beginning of the season, losing their first nine contests. The losses themselves could not have been any closer — seven of the nine games saw RU fall by a single goal, with two tilts going into overtime.
Despite putting up impressive offensive numbers, including a 22 shot barrage against Appalachian State, the Knights continually fell a hair short of victory.
The freshman goalkeeping tandem of Vickie Lavell and Shanice Beasley was thrown into the fire from day one, splitting the starting duties to begin the year.
Lavell finished the year with a 4.6 saves per game average, good for fourth in the conference, and was sixth in the conference with 69 saves in 15 games played.
“We had a freshman goalkeeper in there who had never played on the college level before,” Tchou said. “On offense, we still weren’t used to having that one scorer that could just get the ball and go; we had to really work for everything.”
With the absence of a single go-to scorer, the Knights found production in three of their senior forwards.
Senior forward Brittany Bybel finished the season as the team’s point leader with 21 and split the team lead in goals with classmate Jessika Hoh. Hoh set the pace for the Knights early in the season, scoring seven times in her first seven games as the team found its footing. Senior Sarah Dunn also helped to fill the void, finishing the year with a career-high four goals and 10 points.
The team finally broke through in their 10th game of the year against Sacred Heart, winning 4-3.
A strong presence in the midfield, bolstered by junior Jenna Bull and sophomores Christie Morad and Kat Rodziewicz, was key to a team that worked to improve as the season progressed.
“Once [a strong midfield presence] was established we started to play a lot better, and I really started seeing it against Sacred Heart,” Tchou said. “I’m happy we’re going to start with a solid midfield foundation next year. Those are positions that are highly specialized, and if you don’t have strong, confident midfielders then it’s hard to connect all the dots.”
One of the heights of the year came at home against intrastate rival Rider, who arrived at RU with an undefeated record. The Knights got after the Broncs early and often, scoring twice in the first half and three times in the second to hand Rider its first loss of the year.
Despite the team’s struggles, Tchou said she was impressed with the dedication of the squad.
“It’s very hard to explain to people outside of our team; people can just look at the record and say ‘Oh, they were 2-16,’” she said. “I surprise some of my coaches and my colleagues by telling them this is one of the best groups I’ve ever worked with. We got so much better in such a short amount of time, if we played the way we did now at the beginning of the year it would have been different, but it just wasn’t meant to be.”
Despite losing their three senior forwards and three starting backs in Chelsey Schwab and co-captains Kristen Johnson and Melissa Bowman, the Knights return the majority of their squad next year, including their two goalkeepers and midfield foundation.
Looking ahead, the Knights hope to build on the legacy that their seniors left behind this year and give something back to the six who are departing.
“We started [looking at next year] today,” Tchou said. “Looking at all the things the seniors gave to us the one thing we want to give back to them is their wins. The games we lost this year we’re going to win next year.”

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out