Head coach Kathleen Parker said the Syracuse field hockey team’s multiple scorers would make it tough to scout this year. She sounded like a prophet when Albany came into Coyne Field last night and didn’t get what the scouting report said at all.

The Great Danes got the tough game against the No. 15 team in the country, but fell victim to the latest in a long line of Orange offensive catalysts.

Joanne Lombard joined the scoring fray with four tallies in the first half alone to tie an SU record and lead the Orange to a 6-0 victory. It was SU’s seventh straight win.

Lombard started her big night in the 25th minute with a penalty stroke goal to the lower left part of the cage that beat Albany goalie Barbara Czaplinski. Lombard then went low and to the right for her second goal on a penalty corner. She got the hat trick less than a minute later off a ball to the center of the field. She capped off the night with her fourth goal with 14 minutes left in the first half. SU (8-4, 2-0 Big East) went into the intermission with that same four-goal cushion.

‘Jo was pretty aggressive tonight,’ associate head coach Mary McCracken said. ‘She was in the right place at the right time.’

The junior got a short break to start the second half but subbed in at the 27-minute mark for defender Jessica Dahle. It didn’t make much of a difference, though. Albany played strong and created some penalty corners for itself. Goalie Betsy Wagner and defenders Lindsay Kocher and Jess Wreski quickly nullified the threats and preserved the shutout.

Brittany Carriero and Paige Sullivan, SU’s top two points leaders for the year, got into the mix with 13 minutes left in the game. Carriero held a pair of Albany defenders off on a breakaway, drew Czaplinski out of the cage and dropped an easy pass to Sullivan for an open-netter.

Lindsay Peirson finished the Orange scoring with seven minutes to go on a nifty backhand from the top of the circle.

‘We started out quickly,’ McCracken said. ‘(But) we kind of fell back a little bit. We weren’t as crisp. But six goals is always nice.’

Nothing could spoil Lombard’s day. A third team All-American last season, she now leads SU with 12 points. She joins former SU player Kristin Aronowicz in the record books, tying Aronowicz’s four-goal performance in 2000.

‘She was due for this,’ Sullivan said. ‘She’s a strong player and she holds us together.’

Published on October 5, 2004 at 12:00 pm