Sports

Ohio earns first shutout of season with a 7-0 thumping of Longwood

By: Audrey Paquette
Posted on: Friday, September 29, 2023

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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) – Ohio (4-4, 2-1) earned its first shutout of the season in a 7-0 win against Longwood (2-9, 0-3).

The Bobcats came out firing from the start, nine minutes into the first quarter, Johanna Hildebrandt found the back of the net and scored her first goal of the season. The Bobcats maintained control throughout the first half and kept peppering away at Lancer goaltender, Santia McLaughlin.

“Even if the flow was a bit slow, we kept the pace and the pressure, and that’s something we have been working on,” head coach Ali Johnstone said. “It was fun to see them unleash a bit today.”

Ohio had 22 shots on goal, while Longwood only had five.

“I think we had possession of the ball at least 80% of the time, so it was awesome to not allow any penalty corners and keep it on our side of the field,” forward Katelyn Whittle said.

The Bobcats earned five penalty corners throughout the game, while the Lancers earned only three in the fourth quarter. No goals resulted from any penalty corners. However, the second half of the game resulted in OU taking control of the game.

Eight minutes into the second half, Bodhi Littlefield scored an unassisted goal for the first of her season. Shortly after, Pauline Hartlieb got a pass from Hildebrandt and fired the ball into the net. OU led the game 3-0. However, they were not done yet.

Whittle substituted in shortly after Hartlieb’s goal, and OU raced down to the Lancer’s goal, Sasha Dikotla dribbled the ball around a defender before passing it to the area in front of the goal. Whittle was wide open, fired away, and scored her team-leading ninth goal of the season.

The involvement of everyone in the game was noticed especially with the movement of the ball.

“We have been working a lot on having a little more vision and trying to find the two-v-ones instead of trying to take people one-on-ones all the time,” Johnstone said. “A little strategy we were trying to work, and they performed it today.”

The fourth quarter consisted of goals coming from Emily Beitzel, Noa Desmaretz and Mary Huffman.

Ohio will face another MAC foe in the battle of the bricks against Miami University (7-4, 2-0) next Friday at Pruitt Field. However, there are some improvements the team knows they need to work on before then.

One is making sure they don’t overstep too much on defense and being composed in the right lines for passes.

“We will show some video, a little bit of some lines that were open that we need to close when we play next week,” Johnstone said.

“Miami, of course, is a great team, but we’re also a great team too,” Whittle said. “We’re just going to stick to playing Ohio University field hockey.”