Field hockey falls to Longwood, 3-0
Defeat found Central Michigan field hockey for the sixth straight contest, this time to the Longwood Lancers on Saturday at the CMU Field Hockey Complex.
The Chippewas (1-7, 0-1 MAC) dropped their Mid-American Conference opener 3-0 to the Lancers (5-1, 1-0 MAC) in a defensive struggle with glimmers of offense.
The Chippewas and Lancers started the game back and forth, but the Lancers offense came on strong towards the middle of the first half and Longwood senior forward Leonie Verstraete opened the scoring for the Lancers when she fired a driven shot to the bottom left corner. The Lancers added a pair of goals in the span of four minutes.
Offensive struggles continued as the Chippewas mustered just two shots in the first half and earning one penalty corner.
"We didn't follow the game plan from the start," head coach Catherine Ostoich said. "We let a goal go in very quickly after we got up in their attacking zone first."
The second half was more of the same as both teams battled back and forth with both teams created a few chances throughout the second frame.
Defense continues to be a strong point for the Chippewas as they split six corners between the two halves.
"Individually, we all need to work on our defense," Ostoich said. "Part of our gameplan was to give them less corners, and we did. We have to be able to turn our defense into attack and we just struggled to do that today."
The Chippewas take the field again at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 16 against the Michigan Wolverines at Phyllis Ocker Field Hockey Field in Ann Arbor.
