After a fast start, W. Lax runs into a 'Bear'rier

The Penn women's lacrosse team's up-and-down season came to a disappointing end at a damp and dreary Franklin Field Sunday against Ivy League foe Brown. The Quakers ended '98 with their fifth consecutive loss, a 15-5 defeat at the hands of the Bears. "We were playing tentative and we were playing scared," Penn coach Anne Sage said. "I'm kind of puzzled really -- I would've liked to have ended on a good note." The final good note got more sour as the Bears netted six within an eight-minute period at the start of the second half, blowing open a two-goal halftime lead. "We got a lot of our momentum in the first half and just had trouble carrying it over," Weinstein said. "Brown just kept putting the ball in the net, and our confidence kept dropping a little more." Brown ended the game with eight consecutive strikes by five different players to close out the Quakers' season. Attacker Keely McDonald led Brown with five goals, while Schettini added three and an assist. At the start of the game, though, it did not appear as if the Quakers would be on the losing end. After a short pre-game presentation, Penn senior co-captains Darah Ross and Emily Hansel led a fired-up Quakers team out of the gate. Hansel scored one minute in, and freshman attacker Amy Weinstein made it 2-0 three minutes later. But just as it appeared that the Quakers (4-9, 2-5 Ivy League) would reverse recent trends and put up a big showing, Brown (5-7, 2-3) sticks came alive. Bears junior defenseman Elizabeth Rodgers scored her first of two goals, and then McDonald scored two straight within a 40-second span to steal the Quakers' lead and move ahead 3-2 10 minutes in. "I think Brown was ready to play and knew they could beat us," Hansel said. "We just lost our momentum [after the quick start]." A Ross goal with just 59 seconds left in the first half cut the lead to one, but a wild scramble in front of the Penn net ended with a "trash" Bears goal -- knocked in field hockey style -- just seven seconds before the break. Brown was able to get confidence from this newfound two-goal lead, and Penn was never in the game in the second frame. "Brown outhustled us to the ball and outplayed us second half," Sage said. Hansel retaliated for the Quakers three minutes into the half-- the final time that Penn would score this season -- to cut the lead to 7-5, but the final 30 minutes were all Brown. "[This final game] was a little disappointing because we lost to a team that I think that we could have beaten," Ross said. "I don't really know what happened in the second half. They created a lot of turnovers in their end." This loss is the end of a turbulent '98 season for a Quakers team where fully half of the roster was composed of first-year players. "It was a season that had a lot of ups and downs," Hansel said. "But the freshmen and sophomores did a great job this year and really got a lot of experience in the field. They're only losing two [players] -- which is excellent and which is probably less than most other teams in the Ivy League." Also, as usual, Penn faced stiff competition throughout the season -- both inside and outside of Ivy competition. The Quakers fell to all six Top 15 teams they played, but gained valuable experience with their exposure. Nonetheless, the team's optimism for '99 is tempered by the realization that next year they'll be without not just their two experienced leaders, but more significantly without two of the top 11 goals scorers in Penn women's lacrosse history. Hansel ended her season Sunday with 25 goals in '98, giving her 57 for her career -- 11th all time for the Quakers. Ross ended with 32 on the year -- 73 over all four years -- eighth all time on the Red and Blue goals list.