The women’s soccer team finished its season last weekend, defeating Yale on the road in a conference matchup Friday night before wrapping up the year with another victory over the Bulldogs at home Sunday afternoon.
With the two wins, the Bears (10-6-1, 4-2-1 Ivy) cemented a third-place finish in the Ivy League.
Brown 3, Yale 1
Bruno beat the Bulldogs (7-8-1, 2-4-1) at Reese Stadium Friday, finishing its conference season with two goals from Ali Mullin ’14.
The Bears peppered the Yale goalie with a flurry of shots all game long — forward Chloe Cross ’15 led the squad with seven, while captain Mika Siegelman ’14 and Kiersten Berg ’14 tacked on two shots apiece.
Berg put Bruno on board just three minutes into the game, when she knocked in her third goal of the year off a corner kick by back Annie Gillen ’15.
“We played very well Friday night,” said Head Coach Phil Pincince. “We started all the seniors, and it was their responsibility to set the tone.”
Mullin doubled the Bears’ lead in the 45th minute, recording her first goal of the season off an assist by Siegelman and scoring again just three minutes later by deflecting a forward feed from Cross.
Earlier in the week, Mullin was named to the Capital One Academic All-District First Team for the second straight year. The award honors her for combining outstanding athletic performance with academic achievement.
“It really came down to what it’s been for us all season — intensity,” said goalie Mary Catherine Barrett ’14. “We came out really strong by scoring early.”
The goaltending duo of Barrett and Amber Bledsoe ’14 performed solidly all game, allowing just one goal on eight shots, to Yale’s Melissa Gavin in the 51st minute.
Brown 2, Yale 1
The Bears held on to a season-crowning victory at Stevenson Field Sunday afternoon, despite a late goal by Yale.
Before the game, the team held Senior Night festivities for its eight graduating players. Seniors received bouquets of flowers from their family members, and lists of their accomplishments were read.
The game began with a couple of missed opportunities by the home team — just minutes into the game, Cross fed a pass to Berg, leaving her with only the goalie to beat, but her shot bounced right in front of the goal line before going out of bounds.
On the ensuing Brown possession, Cross saw her own shot bounce off the top goal post before being deflected by Yale goalie Elise Wilcox.
Brown finally scored 22 minutes into the game. After Yale back Muriel Battaglia slide-tackled to knock out a would-be Bruno goal, Gillen took a corner kick that sailed into a horde of players. Cross headed the ball in mid-air, deflecting it to the back of the net.
As the first half drew to a close, spectators erupted into a wave of cheers for Bledsoe, who embraced her teammates as she walked off the field as a Brown goalie for the final time in her career.
Rain began to fall in the second half, and both sides struggled to generate offense.
With just under five minutes left to play, Bledsoe subbed in as a midfielder, allowing all eight seniors to be on the field together for the last time.
Just a minute later, Berg placed a pass from Siegelman over diving goalie Rachel Ames.
But with a little more than a minute left in the game, Yale forward Juliann Jeffrey chipped in her team’s first score of the afternoon, kicking the ball beyond Barrett’s outstretched hands.
As the Bulldogs scrambled to score an equalizer, Bruno’s seniors grouped together for one last defensive stand, successfully keeping the ball away from their opponents as the final seconds passed by.
“It means a lot to win this game,” Siegelman said. “We’re such a close class, and such a close team. We wanted to make our senior year as strong as possible, and that’s how we finished.”
Pincince complimented his graduating group of players, saying that they had been “amazing from the day they came in.”
“We knew we had something special with this recruiting class,” Pincince said. “They have been the mainstay the last four years here and have been able to adjust to all the changes we made in our program.”
The Bears finish the season with four Ivy wins, the most they have earned in conference play since 2003.
“Having four wins is a big deal for us,” Siegelman said. “We played hard, and there were lots of tough games, but the key is that we learned from that and moved forward every time.”
The Bears’ third-place finish brings them up four spots from last year, when they finished second to last in the Ivy League.
“We’re really proud to have left our mark,” Barrett said. “For most of us, this isn’t just the end of our college career but the end of our competitive soccer careers altogether, and we’re happy about how we responded to accomplish something that hasn’t been done for a really long time.”
ADVERTISEMENT
