A crucial stretch of seven games in three weeks for the Penn women's soccer team begins tomorrow in New York as the Quakers take on Columbia.
And although the two teams enter with very different records -- Penn is 5-2-2 and 1-1 in the Ivy League, while Columbia is 3-6-1 and 0-2 in the Ivy League -- Quakers coach Darren Ambrose is not taking the Lions lightly.
"They're a dangerous team because they are desperate for a win," he said. "They are a good 0-2 team in the league. They are not a bad team."
Both squads come into the game off wins. Penn edged Drexel, 2-1, on Wednesday, and Columbia beat Manhattan Wednesday by the same score, with both Lions goals coming in the last five minutes of the game.
Ambrose pointed to Columbia's skill on the flanks as a facet of the game his team will have to watch, singling out freshman Shannon Munoz -- who scored the game-winner against the Jaspers -- and junior Jana Whiting.
"She scores on set pieces, she's good in the air, she's very dangerous going forward," Ambrose said of Whiting.
But the Penn coach believes that his team is every bit Columbia's equal out wide.
"Rachelle [Snyder] and Lydia [Bojcun] both have played there for the majority of the season and they've done a great job," he said, citing the 1-1 tie against Saint Louis, another team strong on the flanks, as proof.
"We did a pretty good job of neutralizing" St. Louis, he added.
The Red and Blue's quest for a second Ancient Eight win this season will be complicated by off-the-field factors as well. This is the Columbia women's soccer team's homecoming weekend, and as a result, the game will kick off at 11 a.m. But Ambrose doesn't think the team will be unnerved by the early start.
"No one likes to get up at 7 to eat breakfast, but outside of that, kickoff is kickoff regardless of when it is," Ambrose said. "We've played a couple games at 11 in the last year or two."
Penn has been scored on first in each of the last four games, and senior defender Heather Issing believes that a change in attitude can bring an end to that streak.
"If everyone comes out with [the] mentality that they're going to run over their players the first minute of the game, that will set the pace," she said.
Ambrose said that he saw improvement in the team's spirit yesterday, with many players aware that the win over Drexel should have been by a bigger margin.
"They were really, really intense," he said. "They were pushing each other, they were aggressive, working hard, playing fast."
