Rensselaer place second in the Liberty League Championship

Rensselaer finished their seasons as pioneers, ending their campaign as runners up in the Liberty League championship, the furthest the program has ever gone. The Engineers beat the University of Rochester Yellowjackets on Friday 3-0 before falling to the Union College Garnet Chargers 4-2 on Sunday.

Fourth quarter breakthrough in the semifinals

Little could separate Rochester and Rensselaer through the first half. Both teams registered four shots apiece and the Engineers had five penalty corners to the Yellowjackets’ four. While both teams had stretches of offensive possession, Rensselaer was the more dangerous team on the ball and kept the Yellowjackets busy as the half came to a close.

While Rochester’s adjustments had kept the Engineers at bay at first, Rensselaer adjusted to make the second half a different story. The Engineer defense denied Rochester any shots and just one penalty corner for the rest of the game while the midfield and offense kept the pressure on the Yellowjackets. “We found a lot more success in the third and fourth quarter with our passing, our cutting – we were finally adjusting to the changes they had made.” explained senior Ria Patel. “When we had played them earlier on in the season, they were playing in a slightly different formation or style of pressure, and just adjusting to that took a little bit longer than usual.”

Rensselaer put the game away in the fourth quarter. Seconds into the last quarter, an Emily Dubord pass off a Rensselaer penalty found Emily Frey, who spun around to knock the ball into the goal. Just six minutes later, a Yellowjacket foul gave the Engineers a penalty kick which Val Palmiotti converted to double the Engineers lead. Putting the game to bed, senior Katie Galgay scored her fifth of the season in the waning seconds of the game to see Rensselaer advance to the finals with a 3-0 victory over Rochester.

Union foils the Engineers

Facing Rensselaer on Sunday were rivals Union. Families of the players sat on the metal bleachers of Harkness Field, while friends and student athletes from both sides spectated along the terraces beneath the nearby ECAV stadium. While Union was 4-3 in conference play, losing an overtime contest 3-2 to Rensselaer, the Garnet Chargers remained a resilient team to beat. 

For large swaths of the game, the Engineers were the ones pushing into Union territory. However, the Garnet Chargers’ defense continuously managed to frustrate Rensselaer’s offense—only nine of the Engineers’ 23 shots were on goal. Rensselaer’s defense did well to mitigate Union’s offense, limiting the Garnet Chargers to only nine penalty corners throughout the game compared to Rensselaer’s eighteen. However, Union’s penalty corner gameplan allowed them to score goals utterly against the run of play.

Union’s first goal came on a penalty corner with just over a minute left in the first quarter. After Rensselaer equalized thanks to junior star Sophia Brown, her seventeenth goal of the season, Union scored three unanswered goals, two of which were off of penalty corners to put Union up 4-1 in the fourth quarter. 

It certainly did not help that a potential goal that would have put Rensselaer up 2-1 was controversially called back for a dangerous shot. Rensselaer was able to tally their second goal in the waning moments of the game thanks to another Palmiotti penalty kick conversion, but at that point the damage was done. As time expired, the Union sideline rushed onto the field to claim the Liberty League championship.

Field hockey campaign still loaded in accolades

As disappointing as the loss was, Rensselaer’s season was still a recordmaking for the team. This season, Rensselaer achieved their best win percentage of 0.833 and their highest win tally of 15, all while sweeping the Liberty League in conference play. The team finishes their season ranked #21 in the nation. Their runners-up performance was the furthest they’ve gone in program history. “We've been saying it all post-season that like how exciting it is for us to be here…we're celebrating how far we’ve come. I'm disappointed that we lost, but I'm so proud of this team.” says coach Bre Lowe-Driscoll.

Last year, a series of close losses saw the Engineers fall out of the Liberty League playoffs. But the core from last season used the lessons learned to grow into this one, rebounding after tough losses early in the season and going on a red-hot fifteen game win streak, downing old foes like Ithaca and Vassar Colleges. “Coach [Lowe] is always saying that pressure is a privilege” said Patel after their win against Rochester.

The team will look to continue off of this season’s performance, with players like Brown, Palmiotti, and Ella Pasquarelli returning next year. You can find the box score for Rochester here and Union here.