W. Soccer crushed in Providence

The up-side of Friday's Penn women's soccer game was, for 45 minutes, the Quakers played as they had during their three-game winning streak. The down-side was their good play came 45 minutes too late. "I wish we had just started playing earlier," junior co-captain Heike Krippendorff said. "Someone said to Coach, 'Too bad your team didn't show up until the second half.' We just didn't turn it on soon enough." Penn suffered a 6-1 defeat at the hands of Brown in Providence. Although the Quakers (4-8, 1-4 Ivy League) silenced the Bears in the second half, by then the damage was already done. "If we had played the whole game and lost," freshman Darah Ross said, "it would have been better than playing half the game and losing." A six-goal barrage by Brown (7-3, 5-0) during the first half pulled the game out of the Quakers' hands early. "We were basically on our heals, tentative and scared in the first half," Krippendorff said, "and they just dominated. Their whole team was pushing forward and it felt like they were coming out of nowhere." Brown, the nation's 20th-ranked team, began its offensive attack at the 10-minute mark and never slowed down. Other than a goal by sophomore Yuka Morita off a corner kick by junior co-captain Meg Kinney, the Quakers were overpowered for the entire first half. Kinney and sophomore Anne Davies, who collided with each other during Tuesday's 6-3 overtime victory over Lafayette, were in the lineup, but not playing at 100 percent. "It really hurt us that Meg couldn't use her head because of her concussion," Krippendorff said. "She's one of our best headers." Besides losing Kinney's skills in the air, Penn was forced to switch Davies, the team's playmaker, to a defensive midfielder. Sophomore Heather Herson took over as the leading midfielder for the recovering Davies. Despite the juggled lineup and five-goal deficit, Penn managed to shut out the Bears during the second half, a pretty impressive feat considering Brown's national ranking. "We played with a top 20 team for 45 minutes," Krippendorff said. "But we need to work on consistency over 90 minutes. I don't think we're doing that much wrong." The lopsided score, Krippendorff believed, cannot justify the improvements the Quakers have made during the season. "I think we're 100 percent better than we were against Bucknell, Villanova and Cornell," she said. "I don't think anyone doubts that."

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