Season starts with two losses
The field hockey team started off its season by dropping its first two games.
On Friday, the team dropped an 8-3 decision against No. 18-ranked Syracuse at home and then lost 3-2 to Stanford on Sunday in Ann Arbor.
Despite the team's two losses, coach Cristy Freese said CMU did show some promise.
"We are doing some good things and maybe not getting those results yet, but this team is definitely better than we were the entire year last year," Freese said. "There are some bright spots where we need to get a little bit better and we're going to win some games."
CMU jumped out to a two-goal lead against Stanford in the first half. However, the Cardinal responded in the second half with three unanswered goals of their own.
"Our first half against Stanford was the best field hockey I have seen from our team in a couple of years," Freese said. "Unfortunately, we really just had a bad five minutes in the start of the second half and that is when Stanford was able to put two goals in."
On Friday, Central started slowly, as the Orange jumped up 2-0 just more than four minutes into the match. Goals from Kristin Girouard and Shannon Taylor gave Syracuse the lead.
Freshman Brooke Sihota tallied CMU's first goal, which was shortly followed by a goal from senior Moyra Betuzzi. Betuzzi's goal came just one minute, 27 seconds later to tie the game.
"We talk a lot about playing 70 minutes," Freese said. "When we got down against Syracuse I think a less-experienced team would have wilted on that."
Sihota tallied her first two collegiate goals in her first two games as a Chippewa.
"It was just exciting to score in general because I don't score that often on defense; it was exciting to score in my first game," she said.
The team will host two home games this weekend against Miami University on Friday and Colgate on Sunday.
"Miami has a good offense, so preparing against Syracuse and Stanford this week really prepared us for the same kinds of things we will see against Miami," Freese said. "I think that we are evenly matched against Miami, but the test will be to perform in the 70 minutes that we have."
Betuzzi said the losses showed CMU what it can look forward to this season.
"We definitely showed that we are mentally tough, we can battle through anything," she said. "Once we do get caught up, we just need to learn that we need to stay caught up instead of falling behind again."
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