Coming into Sunday afternoon’s heavyweight matchup between No. 5 Syracuse and No. 6 Princeton at J.S. Coyne Stadium, the Orange had scored five of its 29 goals on the season off penalty corners.

Just 21 minutes in, SU had a chance for the corner. Jordan Page fired a pass from the corner to Laura Hahnefeldt. Hahnefeldt ripped a shot that took two deflections, the second of which came off Serra Degnan’s stick, before bouncing off the underside of the crossbar and into the goal.

“We’ve been working on corners a lot this past week,” Hahnefeldt said. “We haven’t been able to score a lot of field goals so it was really important for us to execute on the corners.”

Syracuse (7-1) converted 2-of-4 penalty corners to help build an early cushion for a lopsided 4-0 win over Princeton (3-2).

In the first 30 minutes, the Orange converted two of its first three penalty corner attempts, as Degnan and sophomore Alyssa Manley tallied the third and fourth goals in the first half.

“That was my first time scoring off of an actual L1 so it was really exciting,” Manley said. “I think that goal really set us up to keep pushing forward and keep fighting.”

Hahnefeldt assisted on both penalty corner goals for Syracuse and was relieved that her own production on penalty corners is where she wants it now.

“I’m really happy I finally got my assists there,” Hahnefeldt said. “I’ve had a couple shots in the past games, but they never really work out.”

The early success on the penalty corner took a bit of pressure off of the Orange back line after a slip up against Boston College in a 6-3 loss last Friday. Syracuse was able to shift to a more defensive-minded approach in the second half with the four-goal cushion.

A stalwart defensive performance from the Orange, highlighted by three sprawling saves from sophomore goalkeeper Jess Jecko, helped preserve SU’s third shutout on the year.

“We knew it was only the first half so we couldn’t let down even though we were up 4-0,” Manley said. “The first goal always sets the tone of the game and who is going to fight for the win.”

Head coach Ange Bradley was extremely satisfied with her side’s ability to produce in an area that didn’t receive as much focus in practice on Saturday as it did earlier in the week.

“I’m very pleased with it. We’ve been doing a solid job on that this year,” Bradley said. “I’m really proud of the composure and the ability to execute especially when we didn’t get a lot of time to practice corners because we had other things to work on yesterday.”

Published on September 22, 2013 at 11:55 pm

Contact Matt: mcschnei@syr.edu | @matt_schneidman