The William & Mary field hockey team began conference play with a bang on Friday night, utilizing an unrelenting attack to beat ancient rival James Madison, 5-2. The Tribe improves to 4-5 overall and 1-0 in the Colonial Athletic Association, while the Dukes fall to 3-7, 0-1 in conference.
How it Happened
- JMU has a reputation of coming out hard, and they did so on Friday night as well, taking five shots and controlling play in the opening quarter. For all of that, however, sophomore goalkeeper
Kimi Jones (Virginia Beach, Va.) made three saves in the first 7:30, keeping the score knotted at 0-0.
- The Dukes kept pushing in the second quarter, but the Tribe stayed composed and disciplined with Jones making another save, and pushing back on the attack to take the 1-0 lead. In the 18th minute, sophomore captain
Cara Menges (Richmond, Va.) intercepted a pass at midfield, then turned and drove the ball herself. Pulling up just inside the top of the circle, Menges fired a shot straight through the defense and past the keeper for her first goal of the season.
- Four minutes later, James Madison struck back to tie the game at 1-1. Ongeziwe Mali, who took a game-high five shots overall, had her first attempt saved and knocked out of bounds by Jones. On the restart, Miranda Rigg drove in and shot from just inside the left side of the circle to score. The Dukes finished the quarter with a 7-3 advantage in shots, but the scored stayed tied 1-1 at halftime.
- Where JMU had controlled play in the first half, W&M flipped the script in the third quarter, and blew the game wide open with an astonishing 12-1 shot advantage and four penalty corners.
- The Tribe regained the lead late in the 33rd minute out of a penalty corner, as senior
Cassidy Goodwin (Gloucester, Va.) scored her first of the year with a lofted shot that blew by everyone after the pass and set-up from senior captain
Annie Snead (Midlothian, Va.) and sophomore
Jorja Morgan (Wakerley, Queensland, Australia).
- The Dukes countered almost immediately, scoring to re-knot the score, 2-2, at the end of the 34th minute. Rigg got the ball in the middle of the circle and swept it down to the near post, where Emily Harrison was able to screen out Jones and tip the ball in. From there, however, it was all Tribe.
- In the 40th minute, Menges was the prime mover again, again driving into the top of circle and this time finding junior
Melanie Strik (Den Haag, The Netherlands) at the post for a diving shot into the goal for what proved to be the game-winner.
- 90 seconds later, W&M struck again. Senior
Cata Days (Buenos Aires, Argentina) got the ball close in on the baseline, then passed it up to classmate
Woodard Hooper (Williamsburg, Va.) two yards off the near post. Hooper took one step to improve her angle, then fired a shot past the keeper and into goal for the 4-2 advantage.
- The final goal of the game came midway through the 44th minute, after two consecutive penalty corners. After the first one was saved and another foul called, W&M converted on the second corner. The ball went up on the insertion to senior captain
Christie van de Kamp (Midlothian, Va.), who then found Snead lurking unmarked at the near post and passed the ball back down for the easy scoop and score and the 5-2 advantage.
- James Madison tried to get its momentum back in the fourth quarter, but was only able to muster a single shot to three for W&M, and despite lots of back-and-forth play in the midfield, neither team was able to add to its totals over the final 15 minutes.
Starters
W&M -
Kimi Jones,
Haley Hopkins,
Annie Snead,
Ella Donahue,
Tabby Billingham,
Christie van de Kamp,
Caitlin Maclean,
Cara Menges,
Woodard Hooper,
Cassidy Goodwin,
Jorja Morgan
JMU - Kylie LeBlanc, Cassie Hunter, Miranda Rigg, Kara McClure, Phoebe Large, Eveline Zwager, Caroline Cahill, Diede Remijnse, Ongeziwe Mali, Emily Schutt, Rachel Yeager
Notes
W&M improved to 25-11 all-time in conference openers with the win ... The Tribe is now 129-95-4 in conference play ... This was the biggest margin of victory over JMU for the Tribe since an 8-3 victory back in 2013 ... This was also just the fourth time ever that W&M has scored five or more goals in the first conference game (1995, 2016, and 2017) ... Snead picked up her second assist of the year, and is now tied for second all-time at W&M with
Pippin Saunders '14 with 22 assists in her career ... She is now just three assists from tying the career record ... Jones earned the win with five saves, and is now 11th in school history with 14 career victories ... Senior
Morgan Connor (Bedford, N.Y.) played the final 15 minutes, and now ranks sixth in school history with 58 appearances in goal ... Hooper moved up into a tied for 14th in school history with 26 career goals ... Strik's goal was the first game-winner of her career ... Van de Kamp moved up a tie for 13th in school history with her 15th career assist ... She also ranks tied for 16th all-time with 65 career starts ... W&M improved to 127-1-1 (.988) when scoring at least five goals, and has won 116 such games in a row dating back to 1945.
Up Next
William & Mary caps off Family Weekend on Sunday afternoon, hosting Georgetown at 1 p.m. on Busch Field.
