The progression of the women’s soccer season has had more extreme highs and lows than recent weather conditions — if that is even possible.
After beating then-ranked No. 25 Pittsburgh Sept. 13, the sky was the limit for the new-look Penn squad. Yet after a 4-2 loss to Columbia two weeks ago, it appeared that things could not get any worse for the Quakers. But although it has been difficult to forecast the team’s results, one thing has been surprisingly consistent: Penn’s performance at home.
When the Quakers have played at Rhodes Field they have compiled a 7-0-1 record this season. So Saturday’s home field should have given them the advantage over a banged-up Yale squad that was coming off of a 2-1 loss to Harvard earlier in the week.
But even the familiar territory couldn’t help the Quakers in a 2-1 loss that dropped them to sixth place in the Ivy League standings.
“We had only 15 healthy bodies so we needed contributions from everybody,” Bulldogs coach Rudy Meredith told Yale Athletics of his team’s improbable victory. “It was a tremendous team effort.”
The game was billed as a showdown between the top two scorers in the Ivy League — Penn’s Jessica Fuccello and Yale’s Becky Brown — and unfortunately for the Quakers, Brown was the better of the two Saturday.
Yale (9-5, 4-1 Ivy) kicked off the scoring 20 minutes into the first half. Brown, a junior, scored her 12th goal of the season after she took a cross from freshman forward Kristen Forster on the left side and beat goalkeeper Gina Winters with a shot to the far post.
She nearly added another in the second half when she launched a shot that beat Winters but ricocheted off the crossbar.
Yet it wasn’t until the 68th minute that Yale was able to get another tally on the scoreboard. This time Mary Kubiuk, another freshman forward, played a ball in front of the goal that landed at the feet of Forster, who dribbled past a defender and beat Winters to tally her third point of the game.
With the score 2-0, the Quakers (8-4-2, 2-3 Ivy) needed a spark to mount a comeback. But less than a minute after Forster’s goal, Fuccello was awarded her second yellow card in two minutes, and thus was ejected from the game.
The Red and Blue weren’t completely done quite yet. With just over eight minutes remaining, junior Sarah Friedman’s free kick from the right side skipped on the slick grass, passed through traffic, and settled into the far corner of the net.
Penn nearly tied it up just under a minute later, but Yale goalkeeper Adele Jackson-Gibson came up with a big save on a shot by freshman Alex Dayneka right in front of the net.
“Adele played a tremendous game in very inclement weather,” Meredith said.
The Quakers ran out of steam after that and were forced to settle for the loss. They now must wait to earn their second Ivy win of the season until next weekend when they take on Brown.
Thanks to a 1-0 Princeton win over Harvard, Yale is now tied for first in the Ivy League with the Crimson, though it already lost, 3-2, to its rival from Massachusetts.
