After a stretch of five games on the road, the women's soccer team will open the home portion of its schedule at 4 p.m. Friday with a non-league game against Sacred Heart at Berman Field. The Big Red will then close out the weekend with a Sunday matinee at La Salle.
 
GAME INFORMATION
GAME #6: Sacred Heart at Cornell
DATE: Friday, Sept. 14, 2012
TIME: 4 p.m.
SITE: Ithaca, N.Y. – Charles F. Berman Field
2012 RECORDS: Sacred Heart 2-4, Cornell 0-5
LAST MEETING: None
LIVE STATS: http://sidearmstats.com/cornell/wsoc/scoreboard.aspx
 
GAME #7: Cornell at La Salle
DATE: Sunday, Sept. 16, 2012
TIME: 1 p.m.
SITE: Philadelphia, Pa. – McCarthy Stadium
2012 RECORDS: Cornell 0-5, La Salle 3-3
LAST MEETING: La Salle won, 2-0, on Sept. 20, 2011 in Ithaca, N.Y.
ALL-TIME SERIES RECORD: La Salle leads, 1-0
LIVE STATS: http://sidearmstats.com/lasalle/wsoc/scoreboard.aspx
VIDEO (fee): http://goexplorers.cstv.com/allaccess/
(records do not include Friday's results)

ABOUT THE BIG RED
Cornell suffered its closest loss of the season Wednesday at Binghamton, yielding two second-half goals to drop a 2-1 affair at Bearcats Sports Complex. Senior tri-captain Maneesha Chitanvis scored her first goal of the season for the Big Red after spinning off a defender in the box. Freshman Caroline Growney picked up an assist on the tally for her first collegiate point. Junior goalkeeper Tori Christ made four saves. The Big Red fell to 0-5 with the loss, but it has scored in each of the five games after being shut out in eight of its 16 games last season. With an average of 1.4 goals per game so far, Cornell is on pace for its highest goal total in a season since 2005, when the team scored 23 times in 15 games (1.53 goals/game). Seniors Xandra Hompe and Jayann Gabrio are currently tied for the team scoring lead, notching two goals apiece for four points. Chitanvis has a goal and an assist for three points, and sophomores Jaclyn Katz and Clara Gallagher each have a goal for two points.
 
ABOUT SACRED HEART
The Pioneers are in the midst of a four-game stretch of road games against Ivy League opponents, having dropped games last week at Yale (3-0) and Columbia (2-0). Sacred Heart — which was selected to finish fourth of 11 teams in the Northeast Conference's coaches preseason poll — won its two games prior to that, defeating Lafayette and Manhattan after opening the season with losses in Hawaii against Utah State and the host Rainbow Wahine. The team has surrendered an average of two goals per game. Senior Jen Mulvey, an all-conference selection in 2011, leads the team in scoring with three goals for six points. Classmate Ashley Moore has a pair of goals for four points, followed by sophomore midfielder Jaclyn Delucia's three points on a goal and an assist. This will be the first meeting between the Big Red and Pioneers programs.
 
ABOUT LA SALLE
The Explorers are coming off a historic run in which it went undefeated through the regular season before making its first NCAA tournament appearance in 2011. This season started off equally strong with a 2-1 victory over then-No. 20 West Virginia, but La Salle now sits at 3-3 after losses to a pair of ranked teams in Washington and Portland, and — more recently — a 3-2 setback against the host team of the Villanova Classic on Sunday, Sept. 9. The Explorers have one of the more dangerous sophomore strikers in the country in Kelsey Haycook, who leads the team in scoring with five goals and an assist for 11 points in six games. Renee Washington has two goals and three assists for seven points. Redshirt junior Gabby Pakhtigian has seen most of the action in goal with a 3-2 record and 1.66 goals-against average.
 
THE SERIES WITH LA SALLE
The programs have met just once before, with the Explorers coming away with a 2-0 victory in a mid-week matinee at Berman Field. The La Salle goals came in the 61st and 77th minutes, then goalkeeper Tori Christ made her only appearance of the season with one save and no goals allowed in 11 minutes.
 
HEAD COACH PATRICK FARMER
Now in his 20th season as a head coach in the NCAA, Patrick Farmer has been selected as the Cornell women's soccer program's fifth head coach. Farmer comes to the Big Red via the University of Wisconsin, where he served as an assistant coach with the Badgers' women's soccer team for three years. Prior to his stint at Wisconsin, Farmer has amassed a 261-97-40 record at Ithaca College, Penn State, Tennessee Tech and Syracuse. He also served as a head coach at the professional level for two seasons, heading the New York Power of the Women's United Soccer Association. Megan Ramey returns to Cornell for her second season as an assistant coach, and Dwight Hornibrook has also joined the staff as an assistant coach after serving as the head coach of SUNY Cortland men's soccer for the last eight years.
 
A YEAR OF FIRSTS
All three of the Big Red's goals during the season-opening D.C. Invitational were the first of the scorer's respective collegiate careers. Sophomore forward Jaclyn Katz tallied Cornell's goal in the opener against nationally ranked Georgetown, then senior defender Jayann Gabrio and sophomore midfielder Clara Gallagher scored on Labor Day at George Washington.
 
TWO-SPORT STARS
The Big Red roster features two players that compete in other varsity sports on East Hill. Senior forward Xandra Hompe is also a member of the women's hockey team, which has advanced to the NCAA Women's Frozen Four in each of the last three seasons, and sophomore Claire MacManus is a midfielder with the women's lacrosse team. Both Hompe (9) and MacManus (16) wear the same number in both sports.

YOUTH IS STILL SERVED
After dressing just two seniors in 2010 and six last season, the Big Red still has a decidedly young slant to its roster. Nineteen of the team's 30 players are underclassmen, including 10 sophomores and nine freshmen.
 
SHE'S HONORED
Senior forward Maneesha Chitanvis has earned All-Ivy League honorable mention in each of the last two seasons, despite often drawing double-teams from opposing defenses. Chitanvis had five goals and two assists for a team-leading 12 points in both the 2010 and 2011 seasons, scoring two of those goals in Ivy League play both years. She scored her first goal of 2012 in the Big Red's last game, a 2-1 loss Wednesday at Binghamton.
 
GOOD THINGS COME IN THREES
The Big Red will have tri-captains for the fourth time in six years with seniors Maneesha Chitanvis and Jayann Gabrio, and junior goalkeeper Tori Christ wearing the armbands. Chitanvis (Los Alamos, N.M.) is the program's first captain to come to East Hill via the Land of Enchantment. Christ (West Seneca, N.Y.) and Gabrio (Honolulu, Hawaii) are the first Big Red captains from their respective states since 2005, when the team's co-captains were Shannon Fraser (Hamilton, N.Y.) and Kara Ishikawa (Mililani, Hawaii).

NATIONAL APPEAL
The Big Red has 14 different states represented on the team roster, with its home state of New York having five players on the roster. Cornell has four players that hail from New Jersey, three from Michigan, two each from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Minnesota, California, Virginia, Connecticut and New Mexico, and single representatives of Hawaii, Ohio, Maryland and Colorado.

UP NEXT
Cornell opens Ivy League play on Friday, Sept. 21 at Columbia, then returns to Ithaca for its second home game of the campaign on Sunday, Sept. 23 against Niagara.