On Saturday February 16, the Hawks lost their season opener to Fairfield 14-7.
The Hawks started off slow losing 7-2 at halftime. The Fairfield Stags then opened the second half on a 12-2 run. MU closed out the game going on a 5-2 run in the final 10 minutes.
After being down 3-0 in the first eight minutes of the game, sophomore midfielder Emily Barbieri netted her first career goal for MU. Fairfield scored three more goals before Barbieri tallied her second goal of the game. The Stags added one more before halftime to make it 7-2.
To start the second half, MU gave up five consecutive goals. Junior midfielder Kaleigh Gibbons stopped the drought and scored for the Hawks to make it 12-3. In the game, sophomore midfielder Allison Stathius had two assists, four ground balls, and caused two turnovers.
Despite the loss, the Blue and White had control of the draws 13-10, but, committed seven more turnovers having a total of 19 in the loss. Hawks’ keeper Katie Donohoe made nine saves, and the Hawks were outshot 30-17.
MU fell to the Delaware Blue Hens on Friday afternoon with the final score of 14-6, bringing their record to 0-2. Head Coach Denise Wescott explained that she liked the effort on the offensive side because they took good shots, and moved the ball around. “We worked the ball well and when we got shots off we were hitting,” Wescott said.
Sophomore midfielder Allison Stathius wasted little time to put the Hawks on the board, scoring 48 seconds into the game, from an assist by Barbieri. However, Delaware would soon take over and they scored five consecutive goals, including a pair from Chelsea Fay.
Junior attacker Danielle Rakowitz scored two goals in the first half that provided the Blue and White with a nice spark off of the bench going into halftime. She would cut the Blue Hens’ lead to 5-3.
It took the Blue Hens 20 seconds to score into the second half, increasing their lead to 6-3. But, senior attacker Cassie Campasano would answer and score four minutes later. The Blue Hens would then outscore the Hawks in the next 17 minutes, increasing their lead to 12-5. With just five minutes to play, the Blue and White answered back with a goal from Gibbons. However, Delaware would add two late goals to finish off MU with the score of 14-6. MU goalie Katie Donohoe had 10 saves, and Blue Hens goalie, Alex Zaugra, stopped eight in the win.
The Blue and White won 13 of the 21 draws under freshman Kristina Vangeli. The Blue Hens won the ground ball advantage 30-16 and heavily outshot MU 31-17. The Hawks committed 26 turnovers including nine that were unforced errors. “Turnovers is a big thing, we just turned the ball over too many times. If we take care of the little things the scoreboard will change,” Wescott said.
On Sunday, the Hawks lost 16-4 to Navy. Kathy Young scored four goals for the Midshipmen, two coming in the first three minutes of the game.
After being picked in the coaches poll to win the Northeast Conference (NEC) the Hawks have now fallen to 0-3, a place where no team wants to be. Rakowitz said after the first two losses that, “We come together and we kind of just brush it off, tomorrow is a whole new day, and we pick up the pieces that we need to fix and we move onto the next game.”
The Hawks will play three games in the span of a week starting on Saturday, hosting Rutgers, Lafayette and then Siena. The Blue and White will look to this short week to get back on track.
