A collective deep breath was
heard around 4:00 yesterday after the Panthers finished off a tough league
stretch with a 8-6 victory over Amherst at Amherst.
The weekend began with a
home game against Bowdoin Saturday. Conditions
were great as it was a sunny day, still on Kohn Field as the grass won't be
ready until this week sometime. We came
out hot and jumped on them early and the early indication was that we might be
on a roll for the day. Veterans of Middlebury/Bowdoin contests would know
better! I think Bowdoin is an improved
team over last year despite a 4-5 record coming into the game. If you remember, Bowdoin was the only team to
defeat us last year on our way to the championship. The Polar Bears kept scrapping back every
time we thought we would pull away. I
thought they played extremely hard and were able to get to as many if not more
loose balls on the day, generating some extra possessions. Our defense was a
little flatfooted after a great start and Bowdoin's fired up team gained some
momentum with their offense. Unlike some of our other struggles this year, it
was our offense who bought some time for our defense to catch up in the first
half. With 9 goals by the half, one
would think this year's team would be in great shape, but Bowdoin had 6 and
promptly scored the first two goals of the 3rd Quarter. Any hopes of us pulling
away were quickly dashed by these two goals, we were in for a dogfight. To our guys credit, they were unfazed by the
Bowdoin run and were able to regroup defensively and the teams settled in for a
defensive game with lots of errors in the clearing game by both teams, some of
which were definitely generated by both hard riding attack units. We were able to pull ahead to 13-9, but once
again Bowdoin stormed back to close the game to 13-11. We went mandown at the end of the game, and
were one goal and a lost face off away from staring at OT! We successfully defended the man down and
cleared the ball to run out the clock and win the game. Mike Saraceni was great in the winning effort
with 4 goals and 3 assists as was Junior Bob Wannop who continues to make a
quiet contribution as a defensive midfielder.
I made the comment to Coach Steve Monninger before the
The
Next up: Trinity at Trinity
1:00, Saturday, April 19
Erin