There was a fumble, and the Princeton midfield scrambled, stunned. It was two minutes into the first half against Yale, and the women's lacrosse team was being sloppy, bungling passes and botching ground balls under a beating sun.
Bulldog Kate Flately slipped in, scooped up the ball and darted downfield, dishing off to Clarissa Clarke, who dumped it into the goal. 1-0, Yale. The No. 2 Tigers were losing to the No. 14 Bulldogs. Huh?
"I guess it kind of took me by surprise because we don't usually mishandle the ball like that," sophomore attack Charlotte Kenworthy said. "I was a little bit shocked. But it provided incentive to take control of the game. To get it back. And I think we turned it around from there."
Fourteen seconds later freshman attack Whitney Miller scooted backdoor to score her eighth goal of the season and after separate streaks of three and four unanswered Tiger goals, things made sense again. Entering halftime, the Tigers were leading 11-5 and would end up winning convincingly, 16-8.
It was Princeton's (9-1 overall, 3-0 Ivy League) eighth straight victory. Yale fell to 2-2 in the Ivy League and 7-2 overall.
"We all tried really hard," Miller, who recorded a hat trick, said. "We always get a little shock when the other team scores first. But I think it fires us up and gets us really into the game. I just thought to myself that we can't come out flat — we need to turn it around, and we did."
Carpetbagger
It was a strange game for the Tigers, and not only because Yale scored first — something that has happened only one other time this season. Former Tiger star Cristi Samaras '99 was back in Princeton Stadium, only this time she was standing on the other side of the field.
After graduating last season as Princeton's all-time leading scorer, Samaras accepted an assistant coaching position at Yale. This was the first time she had competed against Princeton.
"I think at first it was weird, but game time it made no difference at all," Kenworthy said. "We were sad that she went to Yale because they've always been a competitor of ours. We didn't want to beat her because she was there but — it was just strange."
"It was a little weird for us because she once was a teammate and now she's coaching against us," junior midfielder Julie Shaner, who scored one goal, said. "But we're still teammates. She's very supportive of how we are doing. It doesn't change our relationship with her. We were looking to play Yale, not Cristi."
But Samaras fed the Bulldogs scouting reports, filled with her observations from four years of intensive play about tendencies and tactics, player moves and consistent mistakes. She knew the Tigers so well.
New attitude
Or thought she did. The Tigers are a different team this year, without the spoke of Samaras to spin on. Though leading scorer sophomore attack Kim Smith attracted swarms of Yale defenders like bugs to a lamplight, sophomore Lauren Simone calmly stepped up and netted five goals with one assist. Seven different players scored, five of them more than once.
These are not Samaras' Tigers.
"We were confident that we had changed a lot from last year and that we were all capable of scoring and playing our great, new defense," Kenworthy said. "Obviously it was an important victory, but I guess the process wasn't so pretty. We had a lot of mishandling of the ball. It was pretty hot out, we hadn't played in much heat.
"But it was a really important step for us to continue to dominate in the Ivy League. I think that we are really building a lot of confidence in ourselves that we're going to go far this season."
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