By Pk Bartley
On Friday afternoon, the No. 4 ranked University of Louisville field hockey team hosted No. 7 Wake Forest.
The Lady Cards played hard against the Lady Demon Deacons, but came up short losing 4-3.
For most of the first half, Wake Forest kept the ball on U of L’s side of the field, which led to an early 2-0 lead for the Demon Deacons. Then Louisville got on track after a goal by junior forward Desire’ Miller. “When anyone scores a goal, its always a boost of energy,” she said. “I was just in the right place at the right time. When you’re working hard to get a goal, and then when you get it, the achievement of it just lifts you up.”
Before the end of the first half, U of L was able to tie the game with a goal by sophomore back Kim Hughes. The game went into half time tied at 2-2.
After half time, Wake Forest came out very aggressively and regained the lead early in the second half, making it 3-2. However, soon after that, U of L tied the game again at 3-3 with a second goal from Miller. After Miller’s second goal, the two teams had chances to score.
Then Wake Forest got the winning goal on a controversial call by the referee.
“When you play a game,” Miller says, “you expect the officials to be fair. Then when they make a bad call you start asking what are we going to do now? And it throws you off track.”
As for U of L’s overall performance, head coach Pam Bustin thinks the Lady Cards have a lot to be proud of, “We had a great game, and we played against an amazing team. And I think, and I told the team, no matter what happens at the end of this game, if we play hard we’ll be a better team than when we started. I feel we became a better team as a result of this game.”
Up next for U of L is another tough game against the 20th ranked team in the nation, Delaware. The game will be Sunday at 1:00pm at Trager Stadium.
