At the last guaranteed game at Franklin Field, No. 18 Penn women’s lacrosse (8-5, 4-2 Ivy) did just that. They dominated Cornell (9-5, 3-3 Ivy) 18-10 to clinch a spot in the Ivy League Tournament. Senior midfielder Anna Brandt scored nine goals for the Red and Blue — half of the team’s final tally. Brandt's nine goals also tied the program record for most goals in a single game. Earlier this season, she broke the team's all-time goal record.
Brandt got to work early against the Big Red with a quick goal, merely 18 seconds into the game. Then, with the first quarter not even halfway underway, she had a hat trick. By the end of the quarter, she had five goals.
Penn ended the first quarter up 7-3. Taking Brandt out of the equation, the Quakers would have been down 2-3.
“[Brandt is] the best middie in the country. She gets draws, causes turnovers, she’s playing defense, she’s scoring,” coach Karin Corbett said. “She is so humble, and she just plays with so much gratitude and puts this team on her shoulders. She’s the hardest worker, and you want that from your best player.”
But it was not just Brandt. As the second quarter went on, the Quakers went on a run that the Big Red could not rise to the occasion to stop, much less even get possession of the ball.
The Quakers’ draw control team, primarily consisting of Brandt, sophomore defender Maggie Bankowski, and senior defender Natasha Gorriaran, dominated and won the draw controls 20-11.
Penn’s momentum kept rolling from the second quarter into the third quarter. Throughout the span of the two quarters, they went on an 8-0 run to take a 16-5 lead, including two goals from sophomore attacker Catherine Berkery for yet another hat trick in the season. Not even subbing out their original goalkeeper Mackenzie Clark for Ellie Horner could stop the offensive onslaught by Penn.
“I was proud of the third quarter. We’ve been really bad in third quarters, so I challenged them on that. So to get into running clock on the third quarter, I was really psyched to see that,” Corbett said. “I feel we did a much better job, one, attacking the zone and two, driving to create movement and not being so stagnant and just using ball movement.”
During the scoring run, freshman goalkeeper Orly Sedransk had five saves. But by the end, Sedransk had 13 electric saves with her fast reflexes to deflect the ball, just one goal behind her career-high of 14 from the team's win against Princeton earlier this week.
“I give her so much credit because you forget out there that she’s a freshman,” Brandt said. “People forget she’s coming in here as a freshman and doing incredible things you don’t see from fifth-year keepers sometimes.”
Cornell put Sedransk and the defense to work. Down 5-16, Cornell had five unanswered runs starting late in the third quarter to ignite the hope of a comeback as Penn struggled to maintain possession of the ball similar to earlier in the game. Turnovers became more rampant, with Penn totaling 14 today.
“What was frustrating is we won every draw. We were not smart with the ball. They shouldn’t have had the ball,” Corbett said. “It doesn’t do any good if we get it and don’t keep it, so I think that was the lull.”
Desperate for a comeback as the time ticked down, Cornell pulled Horner from the goal. With an open net and only a handful of minutes left, Brandt saw the open opportunity to score her eighth goal of the game. And then with 10 seconds left, she scored the dagger — inciting cheers from the alumni who returned for Alumni Day and sat together on the south side of the field.
“It’s so cool to see them over there. There’s so much history and so much tradition in this program to see the people that come before you and built this program … [that] we just get the privilege to carry it [on],” Brandt said. “It really means so much more than I can put into words, being able to see the overwhelming support they bring and all the legacy that sideline carries.”
With the win, Penn officially clinched a spot in the upcoming Ivy League Tournament. Penn joins Brown and Princeton as the first three teams officially in.
The Quakers’ season finale at Brown on April 26 will be key in deciding the final standings of the tournament.
“Our coach always says don’t tolerate things in a win you wouldn’t tolerate in a loss. So we’re gonna look at this game as closely as we would a loss,” Brandt said. “We’re gonna do a reflection on that and move forward onto Towson and our final Ivy to get us in the best position for the tournament.”
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