F. Hockey revs up offensive scoring machine

The old adage says offense wins games, but defense wins championships. Sure it's a ridiculous cliche. But if you ask the Penn field hockey team, the Quakers can tell you first hand it's completely true. The past two years, Penn's suffocating defense has led to consecutive Ivy League championships. Against West Chester Saturday, the Quakers' unstoppable offensive machine led to a 4-2 victory at Franklin Field. Senior midfielder Amy Pine and junior forward Marla Maiorano each notched a pair of goals to spur the Quakers (5-1-1) to their second consecutive victory. Penn is undefeated in its last four contests, with a 3-0-1 record during that stretch. "We're playing with extraordinary confidence," Penn coach Anne Sage said. "We're getting great efforts from both the defense and the offense, and we're just outplaying our opponents." West Chester actually started the game taking the play to the Quakers. With just 6 minutes, 30 seconds off the clock in the first half, West Chester junior forward Suzie Holubek scored to give the Rams the early lead. "I felt like our defense played a fairly solid game," Penn senior defenseman Rani Bajwa said. "But we got caught in transition on a couple of goals. "On that first goal, the forwards were coming back to pick up their players, and we just got confused. The ball slipped through, and they were able to score. Fortunately, we kept our composure." With 16:55 remaining in the first half, Penn found a way to pull even with. Pine, the Quakers' leading scorer, rammed the ball past goaltender Jenna Pappert on a corner to notch her sixth goal of the season. "The corners are really clicking now," Sage said. "We had some trouble earlier, but [Pine] is starting to use her big shot effectively." Pine scored on another corner just more than a minute into the second half, affording Penn its first lead of the afternoon. It was a lead the Quakers would never relinquish. With the Rams pushing to tie the count at 2, the Penn defense was hard pressed to stop them. Out of desperation, the Quakers just cleared the ball. For Penn, it was probably the best thing that could have happened. Junior forward Kara Philbin, who has blazing speed and dazzling stickhandling abilities, turned on the jets and outran the entire West Chester defensive corps to the ball deep on the right sideline. Philbin spun around, cut toward the cage and threw the ball to Maiorano, who banged it home for her first tally of the season. "Kara just has incredible touch," Maiorano said. "She anticipated the play well, and all I had to do was bang it home." "Our team is just having a lot of fun out there right now," Philbin said. "Everything is building up, and it's just an exciting feeling out there on the field. We really are connecting extremely well right now. It's a great feeling when you can connect like Marla and I did." It was so great, Philbin decided to try it again. She switched into high gear to chase down a Quaker clearing attempt and broke in against Pappert. Wearing a Ram on her back, Philbin juked left and made a fantastic cutback to her right to draw Pappert, who sprawled along the carpet to deny Philbin access to the twine. Philbin instead dropped the ball parallel to the goal line to the waiting Maiorano, who cradled the ball for an eternity, and fired it into the vacated net. "That second goal was purely Kara, all the way," Maiorano said. "I just happened to be there. Kara pulled [Pappert] out of the net, and slid the ball to me. I really just got lucky to be there." The Quakers can all seem to sense this team's development into one of the top teams in the country. "I'm very proud of the way we've played, the way we've grown," Sage said. "We've got composure. Now it's just exciting to watch, because things are starting to click. We've got incredible team offense, incredible team defense." The Rams discovered this knowledge the hard way. But as far as the Quakers are concerned, this is only the beginning. "It's great to see this happening now," Sage said. "It will be wonderful as they continue to get better. There's really no limit, with all this potential. We're just starting to realize it." With the combination of defense and offense the Quakers boast, the rest of the country will realize it too. They have put themselves in a position to win both games and championships. At least, that's how the old saying goes.