By Andy MacDougall, News Staff
On Sept. 13, Northeastern field hockey coach Cheryl Murtagh notched her 350th win with the Huskies in a 5-0 shutout of Dartmouth. Collecting 350 wins with a single program is an achievement only a handful of coaches at the Division I level can claim.
It’s been six games since that win, but Murtagh will have to wait until at least Sunday to claim No. 351.
The Huskies came up empty in three home games this week and find themselves in the midst of a six-game losing streak. In their first Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) game of the season, Northeastern fell to Hofstra Friday evening, 5-4, before being blanked by a pair of nationally ranked teams. The Huskies fell 3-0 to the ninth-ranked Boston College Eagles Sunday afternoon before dropping a 2-0 decision to 13th-ranked University of Massachusetts Amherst Wednesday evening.
“I think we’re five or six plays away from feeling good about our play,” Coach Murtagh said. “We’re competing. We’re attacking. We’re defending. We’re doing all those things, but we need people to step up and give a little more, and be able to make plays.”
In its first conference game of the year, Northeastern was first to find the back of the cage. Emmy Zweserijn continued her torrid freshman campaign with the game’s opening goal at 17:41, hammering home a rebound off a shot from freshman forward Jessica Unger for the 1-0 lead. Hofstra, however, would net a pair of goals in the span of just over a minute to enter the break with a 2-1 lead.
Northeastern would answer five minutes into the second half as Zweserijn’s team-leading fifth goal of the season would knot the game at two. The Pride would respond with two goals of their own, as Jonel Boileau netted the next two Hofstra goals to give the Pride a 4-2 lead with less than 15 minutes remaining.
Sophomore forward Vanessa Pryor made things interesting by notching her third goal of the season with under 13 minutes remaining, but Hofstra’s Stella Schoen sent home the game-winner at 60:27 on an assist by Boileau. Senior captain Lindsay Bennett added a goal in the waning moments to bring the final score to 5-4.
The Huskies looked to stem the losing streak with a visit from ninth-ranked Boston College on Sunday afternoon. Northeastern played a strong first half, registering four shots to BC’s six, but an Emily McCoy goal with a minute and a half remaining in the first half put the Eagles on top, 1-0, at halftime.
The Eagles put the game out of reach in the second half; freshman midfielder McCoy added her second goal of the game midway through the frame, while a goal from freshman forward Leah Frome upped the BC lead to 3-0. The Huskies finished with rather similar numbers to the highly ranked Eagles, trailing only a small amount in shots on goal (10-8) and penalty corners (5-4), an outcome Coach Murtagh cited as promising.
Northeastern welcomed another ranked team Wednesday night as they played the University of Massachusetts Amherst under the lights at Solomon Field. However, a goal by UM’s Molly MacDonnell a minute into the second half would prove to be the game-winner. Freshman Becky Garner had three saves in the win.
Northeastern’s six-game losing streak marks the program’s longest losing streak since 2008, when they lost the last seven games of the season. This is the first time the Huskies have been shut out in back-to-back losses since the final two games of that 2008 season, when they lost 5-0 at James Madison University before dropping the season finale at Virginia Commonwealth University by a score of 2-0.
“Every game we’ve been improving as a team,” Bennett said. “We’ve been taking the positives from each game and moving forward with it. This is just another building block [to help us] beat La Salle Sunday.”
The Huskies look to snap the skid Sunday as they welcome the La Salle Explorers to Solomon Field. The game is scheduled for 1 p.m.
