Penn women's soccer piecing itself together despite injuries

If Penn women's soccer coach Darren Ambrose had a crystal ball three weeks ago and could have seen the Quaker’s starting lineup for Friday’s game against Virginia Commonwealth, he would hardly recognize his own team.

“80 percent of our team [hasn't] played significant minutes in a college game yet,” he said. “Until now.”

The starting roster now includes several freshman and returners who had logged very few minutes in the 2013 season due to a slew of injuries to several of the team’s key players: senior midfielder Kaitlyn Moore, sophomore midfielder Tahirih Nesmith and junior back Paige Lombard.

Nesmith was the second-leading scorer for the Quakers last year, earning honorable mention All-Ivy honors. Although the sophomore logged minutes in several of Penn’s opening games, she is officially out for the rest of the 2014-2015 season with a torn ACL.

Ambrose expected Lombard, a transfer student from Miami, to start come September. However, these plans were quashed by an ACL tear just two weeks before the start of Penn’s preseason.

Moore, on the other hand, is on the rebound. After missing the last two games of 2013 with a knee injury, she is finally back to practicing full time. 

The co-captain is itching to get back on the field. “[Recovery] has been slow, but worth it,” she said. Looking ahead to Friday’s game, she is hoping to “finally” get minutes.

Ambrose can’t wait to see Moore back on the field either. 

“It is certainly a massive difference in [the team’s] training when she is on the field,” he said. “It is in how the kids respond, her energy, her experience, her physical presence just in itself is a big difference.”

The tentative goal for the weekend is to get Moore back onto the field so that she can be ready to start for the beginning of Penn’s Ivy play against Harvard, the defending league champion, on Sept. 27. 

“If she handles [Friday’s game] well and is capable she’ll go again,” Ambrose said. 

And that is a big “if” – both Ambrose and Moore know that nothing is set in stone yet. This season has taught Ambrose to be patient with his roster. 

“Injuries are a part of sports and you play the cards that you’ve got,” he says. “When you have so any younger players still learning how to compete at this level, there are things that are expectations within our program and there are certain things that we do in situations and they’re not quite there yet.”

Last weekend, Ambrose took an unconventional approach to filling the holes created by Nesmith’s absence. During Sunday’s 3-0 loss to William and Mary, he put freshman forward Natasha Davenport into the backfield because her speed on the ball rivals the injured Nesmith.

Davenport was quite surprised by the choice as she says she was only given a 5-10 minute heads up from Ambrose before jumping into the backfield. 

“He pulled me over and said, 'watch the outside back, because you’re gonna go in there,'” she laughs.

Ambrose explained that "when you’re on a team like this, you play where your team needs you.” This year, that has meant some unexpected places for returners and freshman alike, but the Red and Blue have stepped up to meet the challenge.

Sophomore midfielder Lindsay Sawczuk in particular has turned her game up a level. 

“She has been an absolute rock star,” says Ambrose. “She went from being somewhat of a starter to for us, if we can get 90 minutes a game, that’s what we want from her. She has picked up a lot of slack.”

And picking up slack, especially in the last third of the field, is just what the Quakers need to do if they hope to come away from the weekend with a pair of wins. 

“We have bits and pieces,” Moore said, “but we’re still bringing it all together.”

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