Doormat Dartmouth stomps W. Soccer

Coming into Saturday's game with Dartmouth, the women's soccer team had gone undefeated in its past seven matches and, at 2-0-1, controlled its Ivy destiny.

Dartmouth, meanwhile, was the league's doormat, searching for its first conference win in four tries.

All that went out the window in Hanover, N.H., as the Big Green upset the Quakers 2-0.

"They played like they were desperate to win," Penn coach Darren Ambrose said. "They played like they had everything to play for. We played like we had nothing to play for."

While the loss clearly hurts the Quakers' chances of repeating as Ivy League champions, they're not drawing dead. Princeton beat Columbia, 2-1, in overtime on Saturday, leaving the Tigers - who will face Penn on Nov. 8 in both teams' final game - as the only Ivy unbeaten.

Yet after the disappointing loss in New Hampshire, Ambrose refused to look ahead to the end of the Ancient Eight season.

"Our goal is to play well and to perform well," he said. "I don't think we're talking about winning the league right now."

In the 24th minute, the Big Green (7-5-1, 1-3-0 Ivy) took advantage of a poor Penn clearing attempt to get on the board. Goalkeeper Sara Rose tried to punt the ball away, but it deflected off a Penn defender right to Big Green midfielder Becky Poskin. Poskin then nailed a 20-yard shot.

"It was a lucky play, but the harder you work, the luckier you get," Ambrose said.

The rest of the first half saw a few solid chances from both teams, but neither could get on the board. Dartmouth finally got an insurance goal at the 60-minute mark when forward Peyton Tata put one past Penn's second goalkeeper of the game, Cailly Carroll.

Twice in the 75th minute, the Red and Blue (7-4-2, 2-1-1) had chances to score, but Big Green keeper Laurel Peak punched out a corner kick and then halted a Kristin Kaiser breakaway opportunity.

The conference loss was the Quakers' first in regulation since a 2-0 defeat at Princeton on Nov. 4, 2006.

Despite the score, Penn actually outshot the Big Green 11-9 and had an impressive nine corners to Dartmouth's two.

Ambrose, though, failed to see a positive from the loss.

"I think we've got to reassert ourselves," he said. "We're only as good as the game we're playing. And we didn't play well. We had very little determination."

He also blamed the loss more on the Quakers' mental attitude than their on-field performance.

"Our mentality has to change," the ninth-year coach said. "We've got to stop showing up expecting to win. . In the X's and O's part of it, we got our strengths, and we got to keep going back to them again."

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