ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell women's soccer team hits the road one last time with aspirations of securing its best Ivy League finish since 2015 when it takes on Dartmouth at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Burnham Field in Hanover, N.H.
Game Information:
Cornell at Dartmouth
SITE: Burnham Field — Hanover, N.H. (natural surface)
RECORDS: Cornell 3-10-2, 1-5 Ivy League;
Dartmouth 6-7-1, 1-5 Ivy League
SERIES RECORD: Dartmouth leads, 26-9-5
BROADCAST:
ESPN+
STATS:
DartmouthSports.com
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Cornell game notes
How To Watch:
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Saturday's game is scheduled to be broadcast on ESPN+, which is available to fans in the U.S. for $4.99/event, $6.99/month or $69.99/year. A similar international platform at the same price point is available for fans outside of the U.S., featuring both live and archived games.
About The Big Red:
• Cornell gave Ivy League-contending Princeton all it could handle last Saturday in the Garden State, forcing five saves out of the Tigers goalkeeper while senior
Miranda Iannone stopped of her own — but Princeton held on for a 1-0 victory.
• It was the second straight game in which Iannone set a career high for saves in a game after she made seven stops against Brown on Oct. 23. The Bears scored twice early in the second half on the Big Red's Senior Day to pull away for a 3-0 victory.
• The game at Princeton gives the Big Red consecutive strong road appearances ending in the smallest of deficits. Cornell largely frustrated Yale's offensive advances until one lapse led to the game-winning strike in the 80th minute on Oct. 16. The Bulldogs won, 1-0.
• The Big Red's last victory came Oct. 5 against visiting Colgate, when it set season highs for shot attempts (17) and shots on target (nine) in a 2-1 win over the Raiders. The barrage was led by freshman
Reinna Gabriel, whose seventh shot of the evening found the net to tie the game in the 62nd minute with her first collegiate goal. The winner came about 10 minutes later on an own goal.
• The Big Red opened conference play with a bang on Sept. 25, snapping the program's 21-game winless skid (0-19-2) in Ivy League play with a 1-0 triumph over Columbia.
• The win over the Lions was the Big Red's first in Ivy League play since Nov. 5, 2016.
• With a victory Saturday against the Big Green on Saturday, the Big Red would end Ivy play in at least a tie for sixth place — matching its best finish since a tie for fifth in 2015.
No Sophomore Slump Here:
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Ava Laden hits the weekend tied for ninth in scoring among Ivy League competitors, entering the contest against Dartmouth with 14 points on five goals and four assists. Her latest helper came via deep cross to set up
Reinna Gabriel's goal against Colgate on Oct. 5.
• Laden was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week on Sept. 20 after scoring three goals in the Big Red's games against Binghamton and Stony Brook. Though a sophomore, by rule Laden is eligible to claim league rookie awards since all Ivy intercollegiate competition for women's soccer was canceled during her freshman season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
By The Numbers:
• While Laden has headlined the team's offense for the majority of the season, it was freshman
Peyton Nichols who started the season with three goals in her first three games. Her six points rank second on the team, with senior
Evanthia Spyredes ranking third on the strength of four points via goals in two goals.
• Nichols and Laden give Cornell multiple players with three goals in the same season for the first time since 2015, when Elizabeth Crowell '17 and Paige DeLoach '18 had four apiece.
• Senior
Miranda Iannone (1-7-2, 1.65, .726, 2 SHO) has been the Big Red's starter in goal for 10 of its last 11 games. The lone exception came Oct. 5 against Colgate, when junior
Nicole Shulman (1-0, 1.00, .667) returned for the first time since a freshman season in which she emerged as the team's primary goalkeeper.
• Freshman
Erica Fox (1-3, 2.53 goals against average, .636 save percentage, SHO) became the program's first newcomer to record a clean sheet in the team's season opener Katie Thomas '05 did it on Sept. 9, 2001. Fox made two saves to blank Canisius.
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Rob Ferguson was hired as the Big Red's head coach in February 2020. Entering Saturday's game at 3-10-2 at the helm, Ferguson served as an assistant coach for the Big Red during the 2019 season.
• With the Sept. 25 win over Columbia, Ferguson became just the second of seven Cornell women's soccer coaches to win his first Ivy League game at the helm. (Berhane Andeberhan was the other in 2000).
• Ferguson played an integral role get the Big Red's impact then-freshman class acclimated to collegiate competition, leading to the group's strength as juniors this year.
• Ferguson is flanked by assistant coaches also making their respective debuts behind the Big Red bench.
Jackie Firenze is in her second year with the program after four years as an assistant at Binghamton, and
Dani Britt comes aboard for her first season at Cornell after most recently coaching at Hartford.
A Call To Armbands:
• Just as it had when it last competed in 2019, the Big Red is deploying tri-captains in 2021.
• Fifth year
Naomi Jaffe dons the armband once again after serving as one of the program's leadership group in 2019. That marked the first time a non-senior was among the captains for Cornell since Claire MacManus '15 during the 2013 season.
• Fifth year
Maddie Hoitink and senior
Miranda Iannone are serving as Big Red captains for the first time.
National Appeal:
• The Big Red has 14 different states represented on the team roster of 30 women.
• For a fourth straight season, the most represented state on the Big Red's roster is California – which is called home by six players.
• The other states with multiple representatives are Florida (four), Connecticut (three), Illinois (three), Colorado (two), New Jersey (two), New York (two) and Virginia (two), plus there is one each from Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
• Though there are no British among the players, head coach
Rob Ferguson is native to Manchester, England.
Quick Starters:
• Cornell continued its trend of fast starts to seasons after a 2-0 victory over Canisius on Aug. 27 and a 2-2 draw with UAlbany on Aug. 29. It marked the first Cornell has tallied multiple goals in each of its season's first two games since 2005.
• By topping the Golden Griffins, the Big Red improved to 6-1-1 in its last eight season openers and 23-11-5 in the first game of its season over the program's 40-year history at the varsity level.
• For the first time since the early stages of the 2015 season, the Big Red scored multiple goals in three straight games.
About Dartmouth:
• The Big Green has dropped three consecutive Ivy League losses to Harvard, Columbia and Penn, leaving it in a tie for sixth place in the standings with Cornell and Yale.
• While Dartmouth found goal in each of those contests, it also conceded three in each. That continued a season-long trend for the Big Green, which has one clean sheet to its credit while only being shut out twice itself.
• That one clean sheet came Monday evening in the form of a 2-0 non-league victory against Merrimack, which is in its third season at the Division I level.
• Allie Winstaley, who had one of the goals against Merrimack, leads the team in scoring with 18 points on six goals and six assists behind a whopping 49 shots in 14 games. Hannah Curtin is tied with Winstaley for the team's goal-scoring lead and ranks second in team scoring with 15 points on six goals and three helpers.
• Charlotte Cyr (4-3-1, 1.54, .772) has seen the most time among the team's goalkeepers, but Emily Hardy (1-3, 2.22, .688) has started in the squad's last four Ivy League contests.
• Ron Rainey is in his seventh season as the head coach at Dartmouth.
The Series vs. Dartmouth:
• The Tigers own a 27-7-4 advantage in the all-time series, having won the last three meetings by identical 2-0 scores.
• Princeton is currently riding a 24-game winning streak in the series, including overtime victories in 2009 and 2010.
• The Big Red's last victory against the Tigers came Sept. 23, 1995, when Cornell earned a triumph en route to an undefeated season in Ivy League play.
Up Next:
• Cornell closes out the season with a trip to take on Dartmouth at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 6.
