Box Score FAIRFIELD, Conn. – The Fairfield University field hockey team hosted their first conference game as part of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference on Saturday afternoon against Monmouth University. Monmouth came in as the defending league champions and left with a 2-1 victory. Both teams played hard and it was a close match all the way through, but it was the Hawks who came out on top.
It took almost 23 minutes to see the first points of the game, which came from Monmouth. Rachel Konowal centered a pass to Cori Allen who finished it for the score.
The Stags had a number of scoring chances in the first, including a shot by Julie de Paeuw that went just wide of cage off a Ruth Smalbraak penalty corner. Fairfield totaled five shots in the first, but they went into halftime trailing 1-0.
The first scoring action in the second came from the Stags who tied the game at 1-1 in the 56th minute. Smalbraak notched her second career goal when she collected a bouncing ball in front of the cage and batted it in to an empty net.
Monmouth answered just about 10 minutes later when Konowal again found Allen for the game winning goal. Konowal had a breakaway opportunity that forced Caitlin Bennett out of the cage as she was able to find an open Allen for the score.
Fairfield did not back down as they did all they could to even the score. The Stags pulled their keeper with four minutes to play to get an extra advantage on the offensive side. As the buzzer sounded, Fairfield had one more chance to score as they were awarded one last penalty corner. Smalbraak passed it to de Paeuw who took a hard shot on cage but it was saved by Christen Piersanti.
Piersanti totaled eight saves on the day for the Hawks as Bennett recorded three for the Stags. Fairfield outshot Monmouth 16 to seven for the game, and had 11 corners to the Hawks one.
De Paeuw led the way with seven shots and four on goal. Erin Buckley added four shots on the day, while Ariane von Schenck and Smalbraak each had two.
Fairfield continues MAAC play as they travel to Rider on Friday, October 16 to take on the Broncs at 7:00 pm.
