BOSTON, Mass. – Sophomores Lily D'Anna (Woodstock, Vt.) and Liz Poteat (Westfield, Mass.) each scored a pair of goals to lead the Simmons University field hockey team to a 6-0 victory over visiting Rivier University in a Great Northeast Athletic Conference match today at Daly Field in Brighton, Mass. The Sharks improve to 3-7 overall, including 1-2 in league play, while the Raiders fall to 2-7 and 0-4.
Simmons owned possession for the majority of the match, especially in the second half, where the home team held a 12-3 shot advantage and boasted a 23-9 count for the afternoon. The Sharks also claimed an 11-6 margin on penalty corners.
Rivier held Simmons without a goal through the first 25 minutes of play, but D'Anna scored a pair of markers in a span of 6:14 to give the Sharks a 2-0 lead. Her first score came with 9:10 left in the opening half when sophomore midfielder Maggie Fuzak (Buffalo, N.Y.) sent a cross from the left side of the top of the circle to the right slot, where D'Anna was waiting to put her stick on it for the Simmons goal. D'Anna scored again with 2:56 to go in the opening half. Junior forward Olivia Trull (Lowell, Mass.) was denied with a shot by the Raiders' keeper, but D'Anna picked up the rebound and was also turned back, before scoring on her own rebound to give her six goals on the season for the Sharks. Simmons took a 2-0 lead into the intermission.
Poteat picked up where D'Anna left off, taking a long centering cross from senior midfielder Meghan Fontaine (Westminster, Mass.) and scoring in front of the cage with 20:01 left on the second half scoreboard for a 3-0 Sharks lead. Simmons struck again, less than five minutes later, when senior Adrianna Fournier (Newport, Vt.) made the most of her offensive opportunity in a scrum in front of the cage. She lifted a cross from the right slot to the left slot, where first year forward Emily Plummer (San Diego, Calif.) redirected the shot out of the air and into the back of the cage for her team-leading ninth goal of the season. The goal gave the Sharks a 4-0 advantage with 15:42 remaining in the contest.
Junior midfielder Hannah Scott (Claremont, N.H.) gave Simmons a 5-0 lead with her second tally of the season. Plummer sent a short cross to Scott, who wound her stick for a blast from the top of the circle that found the back of the cage with 6:33 to play in the match. Poteat capped the scoring, 67 seconds later, with her seventh marker of the year for the Sharks when Trull sent a centering cross to her that she settled in front of the cage and finished to give the home team a 6-0 margin with 5:26 left in the game.
First year forward Maegan Sheehy led the offensive effort for the Raiders with three shots.
Sophomore goalie Lucy McNamara (Brewster, Mass.) recorded five saves to earn the victory for Simmons and sophomore midfielder Krystianna Pietrzak (Bennington, Vt.) recorded a defensive save, while senior keeper Emily Foster (West Lebanon, N.H.) stopped seven of 11 shots in the first 54:18 of action for Rivier, before yielding to first year Katie Olsen (Saugus, Mass.), who turned away one of three shots on the cage in the final 15:42 of play.
The Sharks return to action on Tuesday, October 2 when they host Smith College at 7:00 p.m. at Daly Field, while the Raiders host Fitchburg State University on the same night at 7:00 p.m.