By SAMMY BHATIA For The News-Letter
The Hopkins field hockey team suffered a tough loss on Saturday against Ursinus College, whose team is ranked eighth in all of D-III. The final scoreboard read 6-0 in favor of the Pennsylvanians.
The game was Hopkins’ fifth in the Centennial Conference this year, the season-long battleground between 11 schools up and down the East Coast.
Ursinus is known to be one of the strongest teams, winning the entire Conference last year without dropping a single game.
The Blue Jays current record in the Conference is now 2-3, whereas Ursinus stands at 5-1. Hopkins’ own sophomore goalie Greta Helvie tallied up an impressive 10 saves throughout the game. She stands in fourth place for most saves in the Conference with a total of 75 thus far in the season.
Ursinus took off to a vicious start, scoring five of its six goals within the first half. The first two came eight minutes apart, both from corners and both by the same Ursinus team member. The ensuing three goals came from separate players through the half, and the final was scored at the 45-minute mark.
“Ursinus is a tough game every year, not only because they are in our conference but also due to their consistent top ten ranking year after year,” sophomore midfielder Morgan Pothast said about the game.
“Playing them at their home venue is especially difficult because of their surface,” Pothast said. “While every other opponent we play uses field turf, Ursinus uses AstroTurf. It completely changes the style of play. People have mixed feelings about the surface, but personally I love AstroTurf’s fast pace of play. Others would argue that the smooth surface is very unforgiving and doesn’t allow much room for error.”
“Despite the 6-0 loss,” Pothast said in closing, “The game really helped expose some areas in our play that could use some improvement before going into our last five games of the regular season.”
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