The Penn field hockey team learned yesterday afternoon that it still has a game left on its schedule, despite finishing their regular season. The Quakers have a chance to compete for the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference championship.
The Quakers (10-7, 3-4 Ivy) will head to New Haven, Conn., this weekend to take on Yale (11-6, 5-2) in the ECAC Championship game. The exact time of the game has not yet been officially announced.
"It's another opportunity to play a competitive game," Penn coach Val Cloud said. "I'm really happy the [Penn] administration is supportive of this -- the Yale coach really wants to play, and we all want to play."
The Quakers qualified for the game after finishing with an overall winning record for the first time since 1997, which is also the last time Penn competed in a postseason game.
"If we didn't have the season we had -- having a winning record -- we would never go," Cloud said. "But I think [the ECAC officials] realized with a young team... we pretty much bring everybody back, that it will just be a great experience for us."
The ECAC Championship Tournament is normally a four- team tournament, involving the top two or three Ivy League schools with winning records that did not make the NCAA Tournament.
But this year, Penn and Yale will be the only competitors, even though the Quakers tied for fifth place in the Ancient Eight.
Harvard, which tied with Yale for second place, and Brown, which finished in fourth place, will not be participating in the ECACs despite failing to receive at-large invitations to the NCAA Tournament.
"It's a shame it's not a four-team tournament, it makes it a little more exciting," Cloud said.
According to Cloud, teams in other conferences chose not to participate this weekend after completing their seasons with their conference tournaments -- something that is not held in the Ancient Eight.
"We even looked to see if we could ask anybody if they were interested," Cloud said. "There aren't too many teams that were available that weren't in their conference tournaments this past weekend that had winning records."
Despite the absence of other teams, the Quakers will have extra motivation against Yale because of what transpired between the two teams during the regular season.
Down 1-0 late in the second half, Penn junior Liz Lorelli tied the game at 1-1 while breaking Penn's all-time record for goals with her 16th tally of the season.
Just over a minute later, however, Yale's Jana Helfon scored the game winning goal -- snapping the Quakers' seven-game winning streak and eventually preventing them from finishing with a winning Ivy record.
And now, the Quakers will get a chance to settle their score with Yale and capture the ECAC Championship trophy -- the Elis currently hold it after defeating Drexel, 1-0, in last year's championship match -- all in the same game.
"It will be a little bit different because we know each other a little better," Cloud said. "I know we can play better against [Yale]."
A win at Yale would also put the finishing touches on what has been one of the most successful seasons for the Red and Blue in a long time.
"We always finish with Princeton, so it's not too often we're going to walk away with a win the last game of the season," Cloud said. "It would be great if this team could end on a winning note."
