Well sports fans, as the enigmatic and often misunderstood Yogi Berra once so eloquently put it, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
Words to live by, especially for the Saint Louis University field hockey team as they enter the second half of their season this weekend, playing away games at the University of Louisville and the University of Miami-Ohio.
The Bills will travel to play the Louisville Cardinals Saturday. Louisville beat SLU last year and was ranked as high as fourth at the beginning of the season. But the Cardinals have since fallen out of the rankings and the Bills seem more than confident that they will be able to hang in tough and pull out a win, even though they have seen their practice time this week severely diminished.
“In the limited turf time we have had this week we’ve been focusing on improving our corners and our possession passing,” Gay stated.
On Sunday, the Bills will travel up to Oxford, Ohio to play the Red Hawks from the University of Miami-Ohio. The Bills beat the Red Hawks last year 2-0 in a tough, well-fought match. This year the game does not look to get any easier.
“They will be a very good, competitive team for us to play against,” senior Pam Martin said.
The Billikens got their fair share of competition this past weekend when they hosted the Stanford Cardinal for two games down at the Anheuser-Busch Center located just west of I-270 and I-44.
The Cardinal came ready to play, beating the Bills 5-0 in the opener and then squeaking out a 4-3 victory in the finale, showing that the Bills were still playing with some heart. At one point they had actually drawn even at three with the leader of their conference, thanks largely to a pair of goals by freshman Carin Boone and a penalty shot by junior Lindsay Lombardo.
Stanford came out ahead early in the game to take a 2-0 advantage from two goals by Amanda Billmyer at 7:51 and 9:15. Boone led the Billiken rally and netted a pair of unassisted goals at 13:13 and 22:42 to tie the game at 2-2. The Cardinal offense struck back just six minutes later as Missy Halliday nudged the Cardinal ahead before the break.
Stanford maintained a 3-2 lead until Lombardo tied the match after converting, on a penalty stroke at 57:34, but Stanford’s Keely Machmer-Wessels regained the Cardinal lead 49 seconds later to close the win for Stanford.
“Carin had two outstanding goals which caught Stanford by total surprise,” Gay said.
Boone’s two goals were the only two shots by the Bills in the first half. Leslie Kearns, the Bills’ senior goalkeeper, had nine saves in the game.
Hopefully, the Billikens can take the momentum gained from their near-win against Stanford, and play well this weekend against Louisville and Miami.
“We are hoping that we can continue to put things together and take the things we’ve done in practice and put them into the game,” Martin said.
If the Bills can do that, then there does not seem to be any reason to think that they won’t be able to string together a few wins as they head down the homestretch of their schedule.
