Ohio (2-1) traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, to play Queens (1-2) in its two-game East Coast stretch. The game resulted in a 3-2 win for Ohio, putting the Bobcats over the .500 mark early in the season and pushing its win streak to two games. In a close game for most of the second half, Ohio looked poised by the fact that it scored a last-minute goal to take the lead and the game along with it.
This was Ohio’s game to win, and the Bobcats doubled Queens shot count with a 12-to-six difference and also more than doubled the penalty corners, with the Bobcats taking nine and Queens having four. The one statistic Queens led in was saves, a testament to how aggressive the Bobcat offense was in goal hunting. Queens also committed more fouls than Ohio, with 11 of them alone coming within the first quarter.
With these stats in mind, Ohio didn’t play as well as Queens did in the first quarter. Queens was the only team that scored and also had only one fewer shot than the Bobcats, matching their aggressiveness. The Queens' goal came five minutes into the game from junior Delfina Gonzalez and set the tempo early on for the team.
The second quarter started to change the tides for Ohio. Despite the next goal being scored by Queens, Ohio piled on two scores later on in the second quarter. Within a minute of the quarter starting, Queen’s senior Liv Rainwater sent a ball into the back of the net, taking a commanding 2-0 lead. The Bobcats didn’t take this sitting; almost right after the Queens’ goal, Ohio’s sophomore midfielder Tori Cisney landed a strike to get the Bobcats on the scoreboard.
With the score now 2-1 in favor of Queens and the timer ticking down, the following minutes resulted in a stalemate, with neither team scoring until Ohio once again took matters into its own hands and tied the game up. Junior Deborah James hit another goal, and a game that was 2-0 earlier in the second quarter had now become tied up at the end of the first half.
The third quarter became a constant back-and-forth with neither team being able to mount any offense. With the game tied, both Queens and Ohio needed the breakaway goal to be able to take the lead in this game. Ohio’s shot count was also surprisingly low this quarter at only two. Queens only had one shot this quarter, and the buzzer rang with no team being able to find any points.
The fourth quarter started, and both teams dialed in, as a goal this late into a game could very well mean a victory in a lower-scoring sport like field hockey. Most of this quarter went scoreless, and both teams were struggling to regain the rhythm present in the second quarter. However, as time ticked down, with only around a minute left, the Bobcats struck.
The final goal of the game was scored by Cisney once again and gave Ohio a huge advantage. The Bobcats held out in the last minute of play to take the game, and with what had been a subpar start, the team turned it into a win. With a 2-1 start to the season, the Bobcats are just warming up.
This was another showing of Ohio’s strong last-quarter play, as they scored a late goal against Saint Louis for their other win. With this win in the books, Ohio starts in North Carolina, this time going to Winston-Salem to play the seventh-ranked team in the nation, Wake Forest.
