Folwer's Hat Trick Catapults Panthers

In a result strikingly similar to the last time these teams squared off in the NESCAC semifinals, the Middlebury field hockey team slid by Amherst in a 4-3 overtime victory, as NESCAC Player of the Week, Cat Fowler ’15 netted a hat trick. Though tumbling over the Lord Jeffs — as Fowler did on her game-winning goal — may have been a more accurate descriptor of a performance that bore all the signs of a season-opener in which Middlebury was missing all nine of its first-year players due to MiddView orientation trips.

“I don’t think either team was super on their game because it was the first game of the season and people didn’t really have their legs,” Fowler said. “We’re all in really good shape from the summer, but there’s a difference between going for a run and putting the ball into play and the nerves of the first game and the pressure of playing against another team. I call it game shape — it’s a different kind of running.”

Game legs or not, the Panthers jumped out to an 2-0 lead, as Fowler scored twice in the opening 32 minutes, the first off a penalty stroke, set up by one of Middlebury’s seven first-half penalty corners. Under head coach Katharine DeLorenzo, the Panthers send their defenders — with their short, powerful sticks — into the circle to attempt to redirect the penalty into the back of the net, or, in this case, into the body of an Amherst defender, granting Middlebury a penalty stroke. With Lauren Greer ’13, the team’s long-time stroke-taker, on the bench in her role as an assistant coach, Fowler was named the team’s stroke taker just minutes before the opening faceoff.

“We hadn’t really practiced strokes this season yet,” she said. “[The team] talked about it briefly before the game and they said, ‘You’ll take it,’ so I practiced 10 before the game. Emily Knapp was in goal and she wanted to practice strokes, too, so it worked out perfectly.”

Fowler converted on the stroke — her first ever in regulation play — and extended the Middlebury lead less than eight minutes later off a feed from teammate Bridget Instrum ’16.

The lead disappeared as quickly as it materialized, however, as the Lord Jeffs responded with a pair of goals in a span of 3:19 to tie the game.

“Early on we were up so it was exciting, especially since we didn’t have any of our [first-years],” Fowler said. “But Amherst answered back almost every time we scored. We’d get so hyped up, get to the center and then they’d score. So we talked about fixing that in practice yesterday.”

The trend continued, with Middlebury jumping back in front minutes later off a strike from Hannah Deoul ’14. Just 47 seconds after the restart, however, Amherst found an equalizer to knot the score at 3-3. Following more than 24 minutes of scoreless play to start the game, the two teams combined to score six goals in a period of 16:40.

“The goals that we scored were off of corners, essentially,” Fowler said. “I think it would have been a different story if we had to run up from the midfield, into the circle and then shoot the ball. But for the most part they were pretty static set plays that [led to our goals].”

Despite the deluge, neither team found the back of the net for the remainder of regulation, sending the game into overtime. The Panthers failed to win a single penalty corner in the second half and attempted just two shots, while the Lord Jeffs racked up 14 shots on 11 corners, forcing Knapp into nine second-half saves. With the game seemingly slipping away, Fowler and her teammates found resolve in the overtime period.

“Every time it comes to overtime, we’re so confident,” she said. “We play a possession game; we don’t give the ball away. So once it came to overtime, we felt like we had it. It’s our thing — we love to win in overtime. So that gave us the boost we needed when we were tired.”

True to form, just over six minutes into extra time, Fowler took a broken play — a poorly executed penalty corner — and turned it into the game-clinching goal.

“Alyssa sent me a pass down near the end line and I received the ball and realized no one was on me,” Fowler said. “So I pulled around the goalie and I ended up tripping over the goalie — she dove to try to get the ball — and as I was falling made a last ditch effort, swiped at the ball and it went in. Over.”

Fowler’s overtime heroics left the Lord Jeffs reeling, having now suffered overtime defeats in each of their past two matchups with the Panthers. For third-ranked Middlebury, the win gave them an early boost in the NESCAC standings, while simultaneously increasing the confidence of a team already in little need of reinforcement.

“Knowing that we can win with a small bench in our first game of the season is a good little kick into the rest of the season, giving us momentum,” Fowler said. “And now we’re adding so much talent from nine first-years. If we can beat Amherst with 14 people, we can beat anyone.”

Fowler’s heady assertion will be tested for the first time when the Panthers host Connecticut College on Saturday, September 14, with a NESCAC showdown looming against Bowdoin a week later.