Despite a tough 5-0 loss to North Carolina Saturday, the field hockey team bounced back with a huge 7-0 win at home against Appalachian State Sunday. The Blue Devils stayed strong through the game, scoring six of their goals in the last 36 minutes and outshooting Appalachian State 34-1.
Duke's goals came from Liz Bateman, who had three, and Kim Van Kirk and Johanna Bischoff, who had two apiece. Van Kirk attributed the win to not only better skills--such as passing--but overall energy as well.
"Our passing was a lot better, and we kept attacking," Van Kirk said. "We played more like a team."
The main problem in the match against the Tar Heels was the second half, in which the Tar Heels scored four of their goals and took the rhythm out of Duke's disappointed team.
Carolina, coming off two losses, only scored once in the first half, but came out strong in the second with a goal almost immediately, and then three more in the last 14 minutes. The first half was evenly matched; each team had two penalty corners and three shots. The second half, however, showed complete dominance by North Carolina as it outshot Duke 11-1. The turn came with UNC freshman Kelsey Keeran's goal in the 37th minute of the game.
"That first goal in the second half just killed us," Duke coach Liz Tchou said. "I was really proud of our team in the first half... [but] UNC just played tough and cut into our defense."
Bischof, a freshman, was prepared for her first action against the strong Tar Heels team and was also disappointed with the loss.
"I was kind of intimidated, and I prepared a lot more for this game," Bischof said. "In the first half, we were up with them."
Angie North, a senior captain, agreed that the Blue Devils played well for the first half, but the difference was that UNC played well the entire game.
"They were really ready to play--they just kept fighting for 70 minutes," she said.
Tar Heels coach Karen Shelton was happy with her team for playing with a great deal of "emotion and hunger," which she believed had been missing in the team's loss to Wake Forest last week.
Freshman Kerry Falgowski, who scored two of UNC's goals, agreed with her coach that the whole team just came together and played with more passion than they had before. While Shelton said that winning so many games in the past against Duke didn't really matter, Falgowski noted that UNC "just wanted to keep the tradition."
Shelton was impressed with Duke's team as well, commenting "this is probably the strongest Duke team I've seen in the past few years."
Tchou was also proud of the Blue Devils, but noted that they need to work on stronger second halves, consistency, more discipline in the defense and creating and finishing scoring opportunities.
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