The DePauw University Tigers hit the road for Danville, Kentucky to play in two games this weekend. The Tigers went 1-1 on the weekend when the team defeated Centre College in a 3-2 overtime thriller on Saturday, but fell short to Christopher Newport University in a 2-1 loss on Sunday.
“I think that we did really well this weekend,” junior forward Paige Berliner said, “We had two really tough opponents, one of them (Christopher-Newport) was ranked 14th in the nation. We showed that we can compete against some better teams this weekend.”
Saturday’s game against Centre started off slow for both teams as there was no score through the first 15 minutes of play. However, junior forward Reilly Bruce broke that silence when she buried a goal just past the 16-minute mark of the game. Bruce’s goal was the only one of the half.
The second half played out very similarly to the first as neither team made a statement early. However, just before the 50-minute mark of the game, Centre finally answered Bruce’s goal with one of their own knotting it up at one.
The Tigers kept calm which played in their favor as Berliner scored at the 58-minute mark to regain the lead.
DePauw held the lead until the closing minutes, but they just couldn’t hold the Colonels down in regulation. Centre's Caroline Brotzge tied up the game at two with a goal in the final four minutes of the game. Due to the tie, the teams competed in an overtime period.
The Tigers prevailed after ten minutes of overtime, when freshman forward Kate Milner slid a shot past the Centre goalkeeper to claim the victory for DePauw.
“By that point of the game I was definitely very tired,” Milner said, “But I got a great pass through and was able to eliminate the last defender and score.”
The Tigers moved on to their second game of the weekend looking to defeat Christopher Newport, the 14th-ranked team in the nation.
The Captains opened up the scoring in this game first at the 14-minute mark, and that goal would carry them through the first half.
Although trailing at the start of the second half, the Tigers made sure to take advantage of their opportunities. Those opportunities led sophomore forward Corina Bourantas to find the back of the net at the 43 minute mark to tie the game at one.
The game carried on for the next 20 minutes without a goal, but just as it looked like the game would be heading to overtime, the Tigers gave up a late goal with just four minutes remaining to give the lead back to the Captains. DePauw was unable to answer back in those final minutes, and dropped the game with a score of 2-1.
“We were really happy with ourselves and how we played,” said Berliner. “Obviously the outcome wasn’t how we wanted it to be, but I think that we were all just really excited that we got to keep up with such a highly ranked team.”
The Tigers are moving into their conference games, and will look to establish North Coast Athletic Conference dominance when they travel to the College of Wooster on Saturday. The game will be played at 11 a.m., and there will be a live stream of the game available on the DePauw Athletics website.