Even with fans of the 12 Maryland-born players on the Bobcats' roster cheering from the stands, the Ohio lacrosse team fell on the road in its season-opener to the No. 9 Terrapins, 12-3.
Despite the loss, a young Bobcat team - only seven upperclassmen are on the roster - overcame several intimidating factors to put forth a good effort against Maryland, a team that has produced a 437-100-3 overall record during its program's history.
Sunday's game marked the first meeting between the Bobcats and Terrapins and the first game for new Ohio coach Allison Valentino.
Maryland came away from the first half with four goals to Ohio's one. The lone Bobcat tally was scored by freshman Kiersten McLouth.
Ohio had 29 turnovers in the game, which allowed Maryland to have many more scoring opportunities than the 'Cats.
They have a really strong attacking unit
and we knew we needed to have the ball more than they did Valentino said. We were really trying to work their defense enough and be able to score from there. But in the second half Maryland came out really strong and got us on our heels a little bit. They were able to get their transition going and got some quick goals. And then we kind of had to play catch-up from there. Our turnovers really hurt us and limited our scoring opportunities.
The Terrapins quickly brought the game to 8-1 in the second frame. Forward and attacker Shannon Hadaway scored unassisted early in the second half to bring Ohio's score to two, but Maryland answered with three more goals.
The Bobcats' last tally came when freshman attacker Shannon Lynes scored off a pass from McLouth with 13:18 left in the half, but the Terrapins would score once more before the final whistle to regain their nine-point lead.
They got us a lot by crossing over from behind the goal into right in front of the crease
goalkeeper Jen Heup said. Your defense has to be amazing to pick up on those
and eventually we did pick up on it. But that's something we just have to keep working on.
Heup played all 60 minutes, tallying career highs of 12 saves and nine ground balls of the Terrapins 24 shots on goal.
Hadaway spoke of what she felt was one of Ohio's accomplishments in the loss - limiting Maryland All-American Delia Cox to one goal.
The score wasn't exactly what we wanted
but we had a lot of patience
sophomore midfielder and attacker Shannon Hadaway said. We came out
and we did our game plan
and we really made them do a lot of things they didn't feel comfortable doing.
With the victory, the Terrapins evened their record to 1-1, and the Bobcats dropped to 0-1. Ohio plays its home opener at 4 p.m. Saturday at Peggy Pruitt Field when the Bobcats play host to Duquesne.
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