As the Penn field hockey team prepared for tonight's game against Georgetown, head coach Val Cloud expressed her season-long attitude regarding big games in her final statement to the team.
"We take each game as it comes," Cloud said. "Each game is special."
On paper, however, tonight's game appears just a little more "special" for the Quakers (8-4, 3-1 Ivy), as they head into the homestretch of the season, with three of their last five games at Franklin Field.
With a win over the Hoyas (5-9), the Quakers can clinch their first winning season since 1997 and extend their winning streak to seven games. These two feats were last accomplished together by the 1988 Quakers -- a team that won a program-record eight-straight games en route to posting 14 wins.
With five games to play, Cloud expressed optimism that her team would accomplish the winning record that has evaded them for the previous five seasons.
"Finishing with a winning record would be huge, since that was one of our goals at the beginning of the season," Cloud said.
After going undefeated in the Philly Six and dominating Ivy rival Columbia, 6-0, the Red and Blue are finally receiving national recognition for their performance as a team.
The Quakers have received three votes in this week's National Field Hockey Coaches Association Top 20 Poll and are ranked 22nd in the country by BPRratings.com.
But tonight's game is significant at the individual level as well.
Junior forward Liz Lorelli is one goal shy of tying a 25-year-old Penn record for most goals in a season -- which was also tied in 1988 -- and one away from breaking into Penn's top-five all-time for goals scored.
The Greenwich, Conn., native leads the Quakers in offense with 14 goals and three assists for a total of 31 points, ranking her third in the nation in points per game (2.583) and fourth in the nation in goals per game (1.167).
Lorelli, however, downplayed the significance of her potential to break the record.
"Just using a stick to smack the ball towards the cage," she said. "Even a monkey could do it."
The Columbia game was the first game in Penn's six-game winning streak that was not a come-from-behind victory. Seven different Quakers tallied a goal or assist -- a potent display of offense that Cloud would like to see repeated in Penn's next five games.
"What was great about [last game] was that everybody got to play," Cloud said. "That wouldn't happen if the winning goal is in the last five minutes of the game."
The Quakers will look toward junior Sara Shelley to set up Lorelli in front of the cage. The forward tied Penn's record for assists in a game with three against Columbia, increasing her season total to eight, bringing her assists per game to .667, -- good for No. 20 in the nation.
With a revamped offense led by one of the top goal scorers in the nation, the Quakers could have a field day against a Hoyas team that gave up six goals on three different occasions during a seven-game skid earlier this season.
But Cloud will not let her team get overconfident given the importance of tonight's game.
"If you looked on paper we should beat Georgetown, but anything can always happen," Cloud said. "Georgetown has been picking up their game lately, so we're not going to take them lightly."
