It took a while, but a stagnant offense finally awoke, and just in time for the Syracuse field hockey team. The Orangewomen overcame a late-game, one-goal deficit, defeating Cornell, 2-1, in double overtime Wednesday night.

Lindsay Peirson notched the game winner 32 seconds into the start of the second overtime. But it was a Michelle Sola direct penalty-corner goal with 5:19 remaining in the game that tied the score and awoke a struggling Syracuse offense.

‘It did,’ Peirson said of how Sola’s goal ignited the SU offense. ‘We definitely didn’t play one of our better games of the year, but we pulled it out at the end.’

Said SU head coach Kathleen Parker: ‘I didn’t think we came out with much fire at all.’

Ironically, though, Syracuse (7-10, 1-4 Big East) nearly took the lead on the game’s first possession. Peirson set up freshman Ashley Fry with a beautiful scoring opportunity just 18 seconds in, but that was as close as Syracuse got to a goal through most of the night.

‘It was too bad,’ Parker said. ‘The first play we almost scored. If we had done that, maybe we would have (played differently).’

Fry’s shot was SU’s only during the first half.

Later in the game, when Syracuse appeared destined to lose its first game to Cornell since 1983, opportunities arose. Parker called a timeout with 13:38 remaining to refocus the team, and some substitutions finally started paying dividends late with offensive penetration.

In particular, the Orangewomen started to force penalty corners, which for most of the night, they hadn’t done. And after barely missing a goal on one corner, Syracuse finally took advantage when Sola fired a hard shot to the left of Cornell goalie Kaitlin Tierney, who had four saves.

Senior Jackie Sheaffer, who played in her final home game along with Ann-Marie Guglieri, slid a smooth pass to Sola to set up the score.

After that, Syracuse’s offense sparkled. Cornell, though, held off the SU pressure in the final five minutes to force overtime. But in the first 15 minute sudden-death overtime, Syracuse controlled play, forcing four corners. Still, SU came up empty on each one.

‘We had tons of shots in the first overtime,’ Peirson said. ‘We couldn’t just put them in.’

It wasn’t until the start of the second overtime, when junior Meredith Gettel’s pressure in the circle set up Peirson with the game-winner, that Syracuse finally capitalized off its pressure.

For most of the night, though, it appeared Cornell’s zone defense and 11-in-the-circle mentality would pay off with a win.

‘They played a very packed-in zone, and we didn’t handle it well,’ Parker said. ‘We tried to hit through it for the first half, and they had 11 people piled up in front of the ball, and there was no place to go. We just didn’t recognize soon enough or well enough what to do. They had every single person on the field inside the circle so we couldn’t get any attack mounted.

‘They really did stymie us by just putting 11 people in front of the ball.’

Cornell took the lead early in the second half off a penalty corner. After back Kimmy Gardner had her initial shot blocked by SU goalie Betsy Wagner, attack Carissa Mirasol fired home a rebound chance with 33:20 left to make it 1-0 in favor of the Big Red (3-11).

‘(We) didn’t start working until after Cornell scored,’ Parker said. ‘But this time, at least, (we) pulled it out.’

Published on October 29, 2003 at 12:00 pm