The American University field hockey team (7-5, 3-0) shut out the Boston University Terriers (5-6, 2-2) in front of the home crowd with a final score of 2-0 in Patriot League play on Oct. 11.
In the first quarter, the Eagles started off tenacious on the defensive end of the ball, controlling the pace and tempo of the play, a sort of pressure they would maintain all game long. American’s offense was also very fluid to start off, creating many good scoring opportunities.
With 7:45 on the clock in the first quarter, the Eagles were awarded a penalty corner. Senior forward Federica Turina Dellamagiore received the ball at the top of the shooting circle and tried to will the ball in, but the ball hit the left post. However, senior midfielder Agustina Roffo was right there to receive the ball off of the rebound, and scored the goal for American to take the early lead.
Roffo was fairly surprised when she hit the first goal because she didn’t have much of an angle to shoot the ball.
“I don’t know how I scored that because I had no angle. But what we usually do in practice is, keep playing when we're practicing corners and stuff. Even though the ball just goes crazy away or whatever. We just keep playing, and I feel that's what we showed today,” Roffo said.
By the end of the quarter, the Eagles’ excellent play showed on the stat sheet. Their defense didn’t even allow the Terriers to get a recorded shot, and their offense created 10 solid shots.
Throughout the second quarter, the Eagles maintained the same intensity, but couldn’t capitalize on any of their 6 shots. Directly after halftime, the Eagles came in determined to expand the lead. With just under 13 minutes to go, the Eagles intercepted a Terrier pass and immediately went on a fast break. Sophomore midfielder Emilia Winkler weaved a pass right into the zone that gave Roffo open space to shoot the ball right into the net for her second goal of the day.
Eagles head coach Steve Jennings was impressed with Roffo’s strong play throughout the season, but especially today.
“She works so hard. She's such an amazing person. She works so diligently on her fitness, her skills. And she just is nonstop. She’s just going to go for it. So I thought she created so much with her ability today, and it was great to have her on the scoreboard,” Jennings said.
That goal was the dagger. After that point, Boston couldn’t get a comeback going because of American’s stifling defense and 3 key saves by Underwood.
The final stats showed a huge disparity between shots and shots on target, purely showcasing the Eagle’s dominance. American had 26 shots, 10 of them on goal compared to Boston’s 9 total shots, only three of them on target.
Underwood was grateful for her defense, and attributed her job being so easy today to them.
“Every time we're in penalty corners, I have excellent defense around me. So if there's a ball that slips through or something that gets past me, I have some excellent girls behind me that are able to clean up the mess and take it out. I'm always indebted to them,” Underwood said.
In an Oct. 5 win against Colgate, Jennings categorized the team’s play as B-tier and said that they needed to play to the best of their abilities and take every opponent seriously. Against the Terriers, though, Jennings thought that the overall play improved.
“I think it was an A. I thought if we had scored a couple more chances, I would maybe put the plus on there, but we did an awesome job. And that was a shutout, and you know, can't ask any better from the defense for that. A very solid day,” Jennings said.
After the win, the Eagles are focused on staying undefeated in conference play and holding on to the #1 seed in their push to having home field advantage during the playoffs.
Graduate student goalkeeper Brynn Underwood has high expectations for the Eagles and is expecting an undefeated Patriot League season.
“Our job is to be undefeated for the entire league, and I think that's obviously not something out of our reach, that's actually our standard. I think if there's a team that wants to step up and try and do so, then they better figure it out because we have a plan, and we're not backing down,” Underwood said.
The Eagles return home on Oct. 25 to play the Lehigh Mountain Hawks.
This article was edited by Connor Sturniolo, Delaney Hoke and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Nicole Kariuki and Sabine Kanter-Huchting.
