Utica Earns Program's First Empire 8 Conference Regular Season Title!

Utica Earns Program's First Empire 8 Conference Regular Season Title!

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Pittsford, N.Y. (10/28/2011) - The Utica College field hockey team secured the program’s first Empire 8 Conference regular season title after a 2-0 victory over host St. John Fisher College Friday night.  Freshman Louise Steele-Norton, who leads the conference with 15 goals, continued her spirited play by netting both of the Pioneer goals.   

“I couldn’t be more proud and excited for the girls,” said third year Head Coach Sarah Elleman. “We have a great mix of senior leadership and young talent on this team.  We’ve worked extremely hard all year to get to this point and it’s truly a great moment for our program.  We are going to enjoy this tonight but we still have a lot of work to do if we want to accomplish all of the goals we have set out for.” 

Utica has earned the right to host the conference tournament next Saturday for the first time in program-history.  Exact pairings and game times for the conference tournament will be decided after Saturday’s contests.  Utica, Stevens and Washington & Jefferson have all secured spots in the tournament.  The winner of Saturday’s Washington & Jefferson vs. Stevens game will earn the No. 2 seed in the four team tournament.  Coincidentally, the winner of the Hartwick vs. Nazareth game will earn the fourth and final spot in the tournament.  If Stevens wins vs. W&J, the 3-4 seeds are either: 3. W&J; 4. Hartwick or 3. Nazareth; 4. W&J (depending on the winner of the Hartwick/Naz game). 

The winner of next Sunday’s conference tournament title game will earn an automatic bid into the NCAA Division III Championships.

Friday night’s game against Fisher pitted the Pioneers against their former head coach, Tarah Christenson, who took over the Cardinals (2-15, 0-7 E8) first-year program at the beginning of this season.  UC (11-7, 6-1 E8) has not won 11 games since 2005 when the Pioneer’s finished the year with a program-best 12-5 overall mark and earned an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament.  Christenson was an assistant coach at UC when the Pioneers made their NCAA run back in ’05.

After nearly 30 minutes of scoreless action Friday night, the Pioneers finally cracked the scoreboard when Steele-Norton received a pass from senior Mallory Mariano, and beat Fisher goalie Kellie Redmond to put UC on top 1-0 in the 29th minute.  UC outshot the host Cardinals 11-2 in the first half.  Utica goalie Monica Storms collected both of her saves in the first half. 

Steele-Norton gave the Pioneers some breathing room when she scored her second of the night off a rebound with less than six minutes to go in regulation.  UC dominated the second half of play – out shooting the Cardinals 19-0.