With Hurricane Hanna wreaking havoc on the Northeast as the Penn field hockey team readied for its contest against Rutgers, the Quakers had a decision to make.
Instead of canceling the game - and likely never facing the Scarlet Knights this year - they opted to play through torrential rain on Saturday. And while Penn coach Val Cloud doesn't regret the move, it caused a major blemish on her squad's weekend, as the Red and Blue were overmatched, 4-0, in the first half.
While they got back a pair after the break and had already won, 2-0, in Friday's opener against St. Francis, the Quakers were left with a record knotted at one thanks to those poor 35 minutes.
"It really wasn't Penn field hockey," senior co-captain Margaretha Ehret said. "We really weren't connecting on passes. The ball was just kind of being hit into space, and no one was actually there."
Their sticks were slippery, they were overswinging and their "shoes weighed about 500 pounds," Ehret said. It didn't help that, in a failed attempt to avoid the storm, the start time was pushed up two hours, to 3:15 p.m. The Quakers didn't find out about the change until after noon.
"With the change of the time on such short notice, mentally we weren't prepared," Cloud said. "We just didn't come out at all firing."
The statistics bear that out; Rutgers outshot Penn, 13-2, in the first half.
It sent a message - "I'm glad the wakeup call came in a non-Ivy game," Cloud said - and in the second half, with their sea legs underneath them, the Quakers picked up their press and played more like they had on Friday, against the much weaker Red Flash.
In that game, the Red and Blue came out of the gates strong, notching seven early shots and 10 first-half corners. They couldn't breath a sigh of relief, though, until Ehret found the back of the net on one of those penalty opportunities.
She pulled around, dodged a defender and slipped one passed the goalkeeper to finally get Penn on the board.
"We were playing like we were very anxious to get the goal," Ehret said. "We were playing very scrambled. And once we got the goal, we could kind of relax a little more."
Even though they didn't allow a second-half shot, the Quakers didn't exactly cruise to the finish line. Their plethora of first-time starters was still rather frantic, and at one point in the second half, Cloud was forced to call a timeout to regroup.
"I think she called a timeout because she was like, 'Wait a second, this isn't how we practice,'" Ehret said. "'We need to calm down, and take a deep breath and relax, and do the things that we do best.'"
Senior Christina Ferrier added the second goal, tipping in Ehret's shot from the top of the circle - exactly how the corner was drawn up in practice.
As expected, Ehret, Ferrier and junior Katie Rose combined for 11 of Penn's 12 points on the weekend. But there was at least one player - sophomore midfielder Anne Matthews - whose zeroes across the scoresheet didn't reflect her true performance.
"She's not speedy, she's not flashy, but she really knows the game," Cloud said
With a young team, developments like that allowed Cloud to be satisfied with the rain-soaked weekend that could've been much better - or much worse.
"I'm not jumping up and down that we did so great," Cloud said, "but I think we're doing what I expected."
