Box Score
Elizabethtown, PA — Sure, Thursday's clash between 16th-ranked Elizabethtown College and 15th-ranked Messiah was nothing more than a regular-season game between MAC rivals.
Keep telling yourself that.
Behind a poised and patient attack, Messiah captured an 11-9 win at E'Town's Ira R. Herr Field, giving the Falcons their first regular-season win over the Blue Jays since the 2006 season and first in the Heather Greer era.
It also put Messiah in the league's driver seat with just five regular-season games remaining, as the Falcons are primed to finish as the top seed — meaning the road to the MAC Championship would go through Grantham, Pa.
“It's huge to beat E'Town,” Greer, in her fourth year as the Falcons' leader, said Thursday. “This hopefully will put us in the best possible position for post-season play. E'Town was the team to beat in the MAC, and hopefully we'll get to see them again.”
Playing in the mud and on the long grass of Herr Field, Messiah (10-1, 7-0) found the going difficult early on. Behind a strong ride, Elizabethtown (9-3, 7-1) took an early 2-1 lead, keeping the Falcons to just a seven-of-14 clear performance in the first period.
Greer's club found its collective footing shortly thereafter, rattling off three straight scores to take a 4-2 lead with just under eight minutes to play in the opening period. Sophomore Cecilia Kjellman carried the ball from near endline to endline with 15:30 to play, finding junior Meghan Doolittle on the right side for an easy score. Junior Rachel Dirksen then scored off a restart less than a minute later, and Kjellman finished a looping run through the arch to make it a 4-2 Messiah lead with 7:57 to go.
The 2010 MAC Champs would never go away, however, scoring the game's next three tallies to take a 5-4 lead at the break. Some deft passing in tight quarters got the ball rolling for the Blue Jays, as — following a free position goal — E'Town's Sarah Cullinan finished a quick strike off a feed from Emily Butler with 5:20 to go in the first half.
The Jays effectively ran offense in the period's final minute, finding Meg Cassels off a curl down the gut — the Blue Jays' senior finishing past sophomore goalie Taylor Phillips' left side.
“E'Town has always had a very good ride,” Greer said. “They're very physical, they're feisty, they dig deep, they work hard. That's definitely a strength of theirs. But I thought we stayed very patient and composed. That was obviously needed.”
It was, because the back-and-forth affair continued into the second half. Kjellman knotted the game up off a free position shot from the left 45 degree mark just 20 seconds in, but Elizabethtown responded with two straight scores — the second of which came off a gorgeous transition sequence following a missed shot from sophomore Maddie Comfort.
Again, Messiah trailed by two scores. Again, Greer's team would respond.
The Falcons' sixth goal was a thing of unselfish beauty as, following an E'Town foul in front of Messiah's bench, a gorgeous sequence followed: Comfort restarted play by finding Doolittle in the middle of the field, and Doolittle quickly found freshman Lizzy Keeney on the right side.
Keeney finished from close range, pulling the Falcons within 7-6 on what would have been a double-assist — had the statistic existed in women's lacrosse.
Keeney knotted things up with 24:17 to play, finishing a quick strike from just four yards off the cage off a feed from Kjellman.
Perhaps the turning moment of the game came shortly after Keeney's second marker, as E'Town's Cullinan took a feed from behind the cage and scored a go-head goal, putting the hosts up 8-7.
Cullinan's stick was checked following the strike and deemed illegal, wiping the score off the board and resetting things at 7-7.
Messiah made use of its second chance, as Dirksen took things upon herself, dodging down the center of the Blue Jays' defense and scoring a hard shot from dead on, putting Messiah up 8-7 with 20:49 to go.
The Falcons got a needed defensive stop on their ensuing possession, but senior Elizabeth Graham slipped and fell on the loose turf, coughing up the ball in the process. Messiah fouled E'Town's Kara Solesky on the scramble, and Solesky put away the ensuing free position shot, tying things up again at 8-8.
“Of course (playing on) this is a different thing altogether,” Greer said. “The ground ball pickups, people slipping and falling on top of the ball ... stuff happens on grass that doesn't happen on turf. Of course it's a different surface, but I thought we kept our composure through it all.”
That composure was needed when the Blue Jays scored another goal with 15:02 to play, using another series of nifty passes inside the 8-meter arch to pull ahead 9-8. Messiah won the ensuing draw control, but both teams exchanged multiple possessions, with turnovers, saved shots and fouls dotting each.
It wasn't until 6:22 remained that Greer's club finally broke through.
A fantastic offensive set saw Doolittle break free on a cut down the middle of the arch, and Kjellman found her from behind the goal. Doolittle caught Kjellman's feed and finished in one motion, tying the game at 9-9 and setting up a fantastic finish.
Thankfully, Messiah fans didn't have to wait long.
After senior Kara Geiman claimed the ensuing draw control, Keeney finished her third goal of the season with 5:58 on the clock, beating E'Town goalie Rachael Waldman from close range.
From there, it was the Taylor Phillips show, as the Messiah backstop saved a pair of would-be E'Town scores, including a breakaway from the Blue Jays' Becky Porter with 2:08 to go. Porter had nothing but green grass and Phillips between her and the goal following a great feed from the midfield, but Phillips blocked Porter's shot from spitting distance, her 15th save of the game.
“She's a stud, what more can you say?” Greer said of her sophomore keeper. “She steps up under pressure. You have to have a goalie that steps up under pressure, and she does it time and time again.”
With the Blue Jays' threat neutralized, Messiah effectively ran out the clock on offense. And when E'Town's Cullinan was whistled for the hosts' sixth yellow card of the day with three seconds to go, Kjellman made the Jays pay, scoring a free position shot as the final buzzer sounded to provide the final difference.
Dirksen, Keeney and Kjellman each scored three times for Messiah in the win, while Doolittle fired two into the cage. Phillips scooped up a career-best seven ground balls while senior defender Andrea Thomas picked up four.
“It was obviously a whole team effort today, and everyone stepped up until the end,” Greer said. “We stayed patient and composed at the end, and that was needed because we made a couple of mistakes and then we had to get it back. The focus is always 'the next ball.' You can't think 'we have to get two goals,' you just have to think 'the next ball.' When we were patient on attack, we found the open girls. It was a matter of being super patient and waiting.”
With the team's second win over a ranked opponent in the books — Messiah handed then fourth-ranked Franklin & Marshall College a 10-9 loss in overtime Mar. 15 — the team will return to MAC play in 48 hours, hosting Misericorida University Saturday. Game time is set for 1 p.m. at Anderson Field.
