The Lady Rams are coming off an impressive 5-0 victory against conference rival St. Louis Friday. This game marked the Rams first conference victory of the year. Desiree Walker scored twice and Brittany Cislak scored once and assisted Walker on both goals.”It felt really good to beat a team like that and get our first conference win,” West Chester student coach Cat Baskin said.
Cislak’s goal now tallies her up to 10 goals on the year, which marks the first time since 1996 that a West Chester player has reached double figures in goals scored in a single season. The last player to do it was Kristin Smereczynski with 12 goals. Cislak’s 25 points on the year are the most since 1997 where Mary Melnick had 27 points.
Both of Walker’s goals came in the first half off of penalty corners. West Chester’s three second half scores came within a three and a half minute span.
Joelle Zarefoss made eight saves in 60 minutes of action against St. Louis. Brittney Harding than made it in for the final 10 minutes recording one save.
Last Saturday, the Rams took a hard lost from University of Massachusetts. The Atlantic-10 leading scorer, Katelyn Orlando of Massachusetts, played a big role in helping the Minutewomen defeat the Rams 4-1.
Freshman Alyssa Gallen gave the Rams a 1-0 lead 16 minutes into the contest when she knocked in a goal from Marisa Holzman. The Minutewomen quickly answered back with two of their own goals before the half before breaking the game open in the second half with two more goals to make it 4-1.
West Chester missed an opportunity to make the game closer when a goal off a penalty corner was disallowed with nine minutes remaining that could have made it a 3-2 ballgame. Unfortunately, UMass capitalized on a corner in the final two minutes to put the game out of reach with four goals.
Joelle Zarefoss made nine saves and Desiree Walker made a defensive stop. The Rams were outshot 22-5 and had six corners opposed to UMass’s nine corners.
Sunday afternoon, the West Chester University Golden Rams field hockey team joined in on the fight against breast cancer on the Vonnie Gros Field. The game has been named “Play for the Cure,” which will include our Golden Rams and visiting Richmond. It was not finished in time for this issue, and will be included in the next issue of The Quad.
The team will travel to Lafayette on Wednesday for a non-league match-up, and then finish off the season home against La Salle, in their final conference game of the season. With a win Sunday and next Saturday, the Golden Rams have a chance to even up their conference record at 3-3. They are currently fifth in the conference, ahead of La Salle and Saint Louis, each winless in conference play.
Shannon Padula is a fourth year student majoring in communication studies. She can be reached at SP613743@wcupa.edu.