Field Hockey sweeps weekend, tough Soccer loss

MONDAY @ THE COUPLE:

-Field Hockey produces on Senior Day.

-Soccer falls in O.T.

-New Field Hockey blog

Welcome to a new week. An exciting Sunday for UofL women's sports and we have a new entry for the Field Hockey blog. TEAM CARDINAL drove 10 of the orbs pictured here into the cage over the weekend while allowing only one to slip by them. WOOO HOOO! Let's get to the stories:

#10 Louisville Field Hockey sent the seniors off in style by rolling past Iowa 4-1 in Sunday action. The Cards are now 11-5 and assured a berth in the BIG EAST tournament.

The televised match started slowly for UofL. Iowa hit the scoreboard first just a couple of minutes into the game when Kim Scraper snuck one by UofL goalie Erin Conrad for the score. You know what they say about sleeping lions...and the rude awakening only served to fire TEAM CARDINAL up. Defensive pressure got Louisville the ball in good position and Kelsey Rosenmeier took a pass from senior Jenna Ahern to tie the contest 11 minutes into the game. The Cards tallied the second goal off a penalty corner when senior Nicole Youman found Karah Nall near the net and delivered a pass that Nall drove home for a 2-1 advantage. The Cards padded the lead near the end of the first half when Haley Jurich popped a Youman penalty corner past Iowa goalie Kathleen McGraw. The Cards took the 3-1 advantage into the locker room for halftime.

Both teams battled in a strong defensive effort thru the second half until Youman retrieved a Caitlin Collins shot and redirected it into the goal for the final margin. The CARDS out shot Iowa 17-6 in the game and Conrad had three saves.

Louisville takes it to the road for the next two. They'll visit Providence on Saturday, October 23rd. and face New Hampshire on the 24th. Enjoy the spectacular New England fall colors, TEAM CARDINAL and bring two "W"'s home...

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Heartbreak on the road for Louisville women's soccer Sunday afternoon in Milwaukee when the Lady Cards dropped a 4-3 overtime match to Marquette. Louisville (9-7, 3-6) got three scores from sophomore Emily Cardell but dropped to #20 Marquette (12-3-2, 9-0).

The Cards started strong against the Golden Eagles and hit the board first when Cardell was on the receiving end of a Shannon Leamy feed and flew one by Marquette goalie Natalie Kulla. Several minutes later Cardell made it 2-0 when Angelika Uremovich set up a pass that Cardell scored on. The Cards took the 2-0 advantage into halftime.

Marquette got untracked in the second half when they scored in the 57 minute mark and tied it at the 65 minute mark. Louisville regained a brief lead when Cardell scored her final goal of the game but the Golden Eagles came right back and tied it at 3-3 less than a minute later.

The teams took the 3-3 tie into overtime. Marquette secured the victory early in O.T. when Kerry McBride connected after receiving a corner kick. Marquette out shot Louisville 28-5 in the game and Louisville goalie Taylor Vancil had nine saves. The Cards stay on the road trip...appearing at Seton Hall on Friday to end the regular season.

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Lacey Jurich catches us up on the great field hockey weekend for TEAM CARDINAL. We will run Lacey's Field Hockey entry on the left side of the site as well until it is updated. Lacey writes:

October 16th.

"We had a huge victory over our competitors in the Big East, the Villanova Wildcats. Going into the game we realized that we have to get another Big East win under our belt to make sure we are still doing well in the conference. Villanova has a good reputation to keep fighting throughout the whole game. Our coaches prepared us all week to play our game and we were definitely prepared. We knew that in order to win this game we need to all play together and play 70 minutes. In the first few minutes, we set the tone. Nicole hit a rocket to Karah as she tipped it into the cage. After this goal we kept up the tempo on the field and also on the sideline. The energy was present throughout the entire game. Villanova stayed true to their reputation and they worked hard the entire game...but we outworked them. At halftime the score was 4-0. We knew that Villanova was a tenacious team and would still continue to work hard in the second half. The Cards came out strong again in the second half and ended up putting two more balls in the cage. Erin Conrad had another shutout game and we ended up winning 6-0. This Big East win is another game that will help us get closer to reach our goals."

October 17th

"Today may have seemed to be close to the end for some of the seniors, but all of TEAM CARDINAL knew that we still have a lot more left in this 2010 season. Today was Senior Day. We honored/celebrated our 7 seniors and our student manager before the big game versus Iowa today. This was the last regular season game that we play at Trager Stadium. TEAM CARDINAL was ready to go! We knew that we had to show all of our fans the things we were capable of. Many families were in town to support the Cardinals this week. With all the hype and distractions of Senior Day, we knew that we wanted to win this game badly! We did a great job of controlling our energy and excitement. This was an emotional day for many but also a thrilling day. In the beginning of the game, Iowa had scored a goal but we never got discouraged. When they scored, we decided that there was no way they will get momentum on OUR field. We fired back with a goal about eleven minutes into the game. Since it was a tied ballgame, we knew that we needed to score a few more goals for a sweet victory. We ended up scoring two more goals off of beautiful corner plays to end the half 3-1. We discussed what we needed to do to make sure we can seal the deal. Iowa is known to be a second half team and we knew that we had to work together. With the energy and focus still present, we scored one more goal and the final was 4-1. The 10th ranked Cards now have a record of 11-5. This victory was earned by everyone on TEAM CARDINAL. No one was out of focus and everyone was alert. This was a very memorable day, not only for the seniors, but to all the teammates and people that they have touched. "

Nice work by Lacey on getting us on the sidelines and in the huddles with TEAM CARDINAL. She and her teammates travel to New England this weekend for two games and we look forward to that report.