The Wittenberg field hockey team has picked up steam at just the right time, winning seven of its last eight games and moving into firm control of its own destiny in the North Coast Athletic Conference regular season title chase.
However, the home stretch of the 2005 season is filled with potential pitfalls, starting Saturday with a road game against arch-rival Wooster. En route to winning the last three conference titles, the Tigers have been tripped up at Wooster twice. The Tigers, now 7-5 overall and 5-2 in the NCAC, have gotten some valuable rest recently after a busy month of September. In the last week, the Tigers avenged an early-season loss to Kenyon with a 2-1 road win on Oct. 5 and then took the measure of visiting nonconference foe Transylvania on Saturday.
Against Kenyon, junior forward Katy Barrett (Powell, Ohio/Watterson) scored her second game-winning goal of the 2005 season. The team leader with 13 total points on the season for the defensive-minded Tigers, Barrett added another score against Transylvania.
The team's second-leading scorer on the season is junior midfielder Holly McHugh (Randolph, NJ/Randolph) with eight total points. She doubled her season total with a pair of second-half goals against Transylvania that put the game out of reach.
While the play of the offense has picked up in recent weeks, it's a stingy defensive unit that has allowed three opponents more than one goal in a game that has pushed the Tigers back into NCAC title contention after an 0-4 start that included three overtime losses. Spearheading that effort is junior defensive back Rachel Dunn (Pittsburgh, Pa./North Allegheny), already a two-time All-NCAC honoree in her career, and sophomore goalkeeper Nicole Irvin (Gettysburg, Pa./Littlestown), who has saved 87 percent of the shots she has faced this season.