Blue & Gold earn their stripes
Team hustle spearheads first win of '08

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio – Notre Dame earned their first victory of the 2008 season Friday, as the Falcons dropped the Wittenberg Tigers, 12-4.  Notre Dame (1-3) was sharp in coming off a 14-day layoff, as they scored a season-best 12 goals and out-shot Wittenberg, 26-7. 

“Tonight was a good win for us,” said NDC Head Coach Candace Taglianetti.  “We hustled from whistle to whistle, and we really executed and stuck to our game plan.”

NDC’s 26 shots against Wittenberg (1-2) were not an accident.  “That’s something we’ve worked on since our Fla. trip,” remarked Taglianetti, “Getting more shots.”  NDC averaged 18.0 shots per game over their first three games, all of which were played over two weeks ago, in Orlando.

Twelve of those NDC shots found the back of the net in WU’s Edwards-Maurer Field, with six being rifled in by junior attacker Molly Merrill (Medina, OH).  Merrill added two assists on the night to finish with eight points, a season-high for the Falcons through their first four contests.

Sophomore midfielder Gena McPherson (Brampton, ONT) added three scores for the Falcons, who snapped a three-game losing streak with the win.  Freshman Ashley Rutz (Milton, ONT) notched the first multi-point game of her collegiate career – she scored a pair of goals while garnering a season team-high three assists.

At the other end of the field, the NDC defense was staunch.  Having yielded 22.3 shots per contest over their first three games, the Blue & Gold held the Tigers to just seven.  The Falcons caused five turnovers on Wittenberg clears; that kept the pressure of NDC netminder Kylie Flett (Sr/Adelaide, Australia), who turned away three of the seven shots she faced.  Sophomore defender Jo Bauswein (Bainbridge, OH) collected a personal season-high five groundballs on the night.

Notre Dame’s four goals allowed marks a season-best.  Last season, the Falcons notched five games where they gave up fewer than five netfinders.  One of those affairs was a home game against Wittenberg; NDC topped WU, 13-4 on Mar. 28.  The Falcons are now an even 2-2 all-time against the Tigers, who went 3-11 a year ago.

The Falcons' next game is slated for Tuesday, Mar. 18, when they travel to Granville, Ohio to take on the Denison Big Red at 4:30pm. Last year, the Falcons defeated Denison 13-10 in Lyndhurst (Mar. 23, 2007). NDC is 1-1 all-time versus the Big Red.

NOTES FROM THE NEST...

EIGHT-BALL:  Molly Merrill’s eight-point game is the Falcons’ top scoring performance of the season, and it falls just one point shy of her own NDC single-game record.  Merrill scored nine points in a game Mar. 21, 2006 against Oberlin. Merrill’s night in Springfield also featured a couple milestones.   With her second point of the game, she became the third player on program history to tally 100 career points.  The Medina High School product also passed teammate April Pegler (Jr/Bryn Mawr, PA) for the program-lead in goals scored.  Pegler has 81 career goals; Merrill now has 84.  She’s scored nine of those this season, which ranks second on the team.