On Saturday, Colgate suffered a tough 4-1 loss to Boston University, but the Raiders will be back soon to compete in the 2014 Patriot League Field Hockey Championship to fight for first place. The Raiders will be the fourth seed in the Championship and are scheduled to go head-to-head with top-seed Bucknell in the first

semifinal match. 

The Boston University Terriers proved to be a challenging match for the Raiders, scoring twice in each half and outshooting Colgate 26-7. The action kicked off with junior Sofi Laurito who scored in the 11th minute, giving the Terriers an early lead.  Sophomore Amanda Cassera put one in just three minutes later while sophomore

Hester van der Laan assisted both goals

for BU. 

In the second half, Cassera scored again, putting the Terriors up 3-0 until senior captain Eliana Brown, who had three shot attempts in the match, found the back of the cage for Colgate, closing the gap to 3-1. The goal came about as junior defender Jessica Gardiner shot from the middle of the circle and Brown quickly picked up the rebound and scored. Gardiner received her team-best seventh assist of the season on the goal by Brown and now has 11 points to her credit during the 2014 campaign. 

Gardiner feels confident that the team can rally from this loss and come out strong for Friday’s game. 

“We have been working so hard all season, and getting to the Patriot League

Tournament was always our ultimate goal,” Gardiner said. “Although the score did not really show it, we really were able to play with BU, which is going to be huge in terms of keeping our confidence up this weekend.”

With just about five minutes left in the game, sophomore Rachel Feig scored again for the Terriers, finalizing the score at 4-1. Colgate senior keeper Amanda DiDomizio recorded eight saves in goal doing her best to keep the Raiders in the match. 

While Brown is disappointed they couldn’t pull out the win against BU, she is confident that they can successfully take on Bucknell if they can set the tone early in

the game. 

“We will definitely be watching the game film from when we played them a few weeks ago so that we can develop a game plan and make adjustments,” Brown said. “Making sure we have intense and focused practices next week will also be important so that we are mentally and physically ready to go.”

Head Coach Kathy Foto feels that the team holds a certain advantage over Bucknell since the pressure isn’t necessarily on them. She sees how badly the team, especially the senior class, wants to do well in this tournament and believes that they will remain focused and intense from now until the end of the season. 

“We are happy to be playing them and it will be easy to motivate the team to prepare. We have worked hard all season long and I expect the team to be even more intense and focused this week since this is something they have wanted for so long,” Coach Foto said.