The AU field hockey team went undefeated over the weekend, defeating Holy Cross, 2-0, and Towson, 6-2, at Jacobs Field.
AU has outscored their opponents 19-7 and outshot them 88-28 in the last three weeks while winning four of their past five games. After starting the season off 3-7, the Eagles are one game away from evening their record at 8-8.
Shelly Montgomery is a key reason for the team’s resurgence and their 2-0 weekend.
“She can use her physicality to get by people,” AU head coach Steve Jennings said of Montgomery. “She can use her skills. She’s also a very adept passer, so she can find people and move off that. So she presents, in a lot of ways, a triple threat.”
Montgomery’s triple threat skills were on full display against Holy Cross (2-11, 1-2 PL), when she and the Eagles shut down the Crusaders Oct. 13.
Both of the Eagles’ goals came off Montgomery’s stick, with the first assisted by Julie Fosseprez and the second unassisted.
As good as Montgomery was, the team was even better, with AU (7-8, 2-1 PL) completely controlling the game.
“We had a lot of movement off the ball,” Jennings said. “We had great receptions and [are] really rolling out to open spaces. And that just set us up with good offensive movement, good offensive options and allowed us to keep the ball for most of the time and have Holy Cross on the run.”
AU came out sluggish against Towson Oct. 14, before quickly turning it on to cruise past the Tigers.
Towson (1-14) scored on a penalty corner a minute and a half into the game, but the Eagles woke up with a goal from Kati Rothenhoefer minutes later.
Rothenhoefer’s score opened the floodgates for the Eagles, as AU went on to score three unanswered goals and went into the half leading 4-2.
The Eagles added two more goals in the second half for the 6-2 triumph.
Montgomery added two goals and an assist against the Tigers, bringing her total to 11 goals and 25 points on the year.
“We had Christine Fingerhuth, who’s a legend, come back,” Montgomery said. “And we had a lot of people working with us this week to try and make us better. Luckily we took advantage of that, and I think it really helped for this weekend.”
Looking ahead to next weekend, the Eagles will go on the road to face Colgate and No. 6 Maryland.
sports@theeagleonline.com
