The women’s soccer team’s 1-1 tie with Columbia last season followed a familiar story line.
The Quakers started slowly and allowed the Lions to establish an early 1-0 lead, then they reemerged in the second half and managed to mount a comeback.
That sounds like deja vu for a 2009 squad that seems to continually dig itself into an early hole and spend the remainder of the contest trying to claw its way out, as demonstrated in the team’s 2-1 victory over Cornell last week.
Yet when Penn (6-2-2, 1-1 Ivy) heads to Columbia this weekend, it will need to get off to a quick start if they hope to pull out a victory.
“We are focusing on the first fifteen minutes,” said sophomore forward Marin McDermott, who assisted the team’s only tally against the Lions last year.
“We all have been working on one thing that we each need to do individually to make sure that we play a full 90 minutes and we hope to take that into the game.”
A win against Columbia (4-5-2, 1-1) is critical if the Quakers hope to avoid a midseason collapse like the one that led to a fifth-place Ivy finish in 2008. Last season the team entered its matchup with the Lions holding a perfect 2-0 conference record but went winless against its final five Ancient Eight opponents.
“We definitely want to come out with a win,” McDermott said. “We don’t care if it’s a good game or a bad game, all we care about is the end result.”
The Quakers will have their work cut out for them.
Although Columbia enters one win short of a .500 record, Penn’s only two losses this season were at the hands of Northwestern and Harvard (which entered their matchups with Penn 1-4-1 and 1-5-1, respectively).
Penn coach Darren Ambrose expects a highly physical game — just like in the triumph over Cornell, which had 37 fouls and two scores off of penalty kicks — and he hopes that will play to his team’s strengths.
“They are a direct team and very physical,” Ambrose said of the Lions. “We want to absorb the pressure they put on us and try to make them chase us.”
The Quakers will be chased on Columbia’s SprinTurf, marking their first game on that field type this season. To make the adjustment from playing on the grass of Rhodes Field, the Red and Blue practiced this week on the SprinTurf on Franklin Field, which is slightly different than the other kinds of turfs they’ve played on this season. Penn is 2-1-2 historically on SprinTurf fields.
“On turf, you have to adapt to play quicker,” McDermott said. “We have to be mentally prepared.”
Despite the similarities in the team’s performance last season to many of its showing this year Ambrose insists that the team is not phased.
“Last year’s game doesn’t have a bearing on this year,” he said. “This year’s team is entirely different and we have to be prepared to battle hard.”
Yet in the event that they do give up an early goal, the Quakers have shown an ability to fight back.
“We have a lot of heart,” Mc Dermott said. “And if we use that desire we will win.”
