Yeager Named Ivy Player Of The Week; Tigers Head To Maryland

Tuesday, September 21

College Park, Md.

4:00 PM

Princeton University

#4 Maryland

Beth Yeager was named Ivy Offensive Player of the Week after a nine-point weekend. She and the Tigers are at Maryland Tuesday (4).

Photo by: Sideline Photos, LLC

Yeager Named Ivy Player Of The Week; Tigers Head To Maryland

September 20, 2021 | Field Hockey

Princeton (2-3) at Maryland (4-2)

Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex • College Park, Md.
Tuesday, Sept. 21 • 4 p.m.
Series history • Maryland leads 25-9-1
Last meeting • Maryland defeated Princeton 4-3 in OT (Sept. 24, 2019)

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Beth Yeager had herself a huge weekend. So did the rest of her Princeton field hockey teammates, and the result is the first Ivy honor for Yeager's career and a confident group of Tigers who will be heading to Maryland for a game Tuesday afternoon.

Princeton at Maryland
Five Storylines

Player Of The Week
Beth Yeager won the first weekly honor of her career as she was named the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week after the wins over Delaware (3-2) and Boston University (7-0). The freshman scored a huge goal in the third quarter against the Blue Hens to tie the score at 2-2 after Delaware had scored two straight to take the lead. The goal came at the end of a masterful individual play in which she dribbled through traffic into the circle, freed herself up and then cashed it in to even things up.

She then followed that up with a three-goal, two-assist effort in the win over BU, running her season totals to six goals and two assists through five games. She currently leads the Ivy League in goals and goals per game (and is second nationally in goals per game) and in points per game (she's also third nationally there).

Old Friends, Part 1
Maryland's roster includes a fairly familiar name to Princeton fans. Juliana Tornetta, who was a two-time All-American and three-time first-team All-Ivy League selection while playing for Princeton from 2017-19, is currently playing as a graduate student at Maryland, where she has started every game and has put up three goals and two assists.

Tornetta started all 60 games during her three years at Princeton, finishing with 18 goals and 33 assists. She was also a finalist for the C. Otto von Kienbusch Award, given to the top senior female athlete at Princeton, before graduating last spring.

The winner of the von Kienbusch Award was Clara Roth, who is currently playing at Northwestern, along with fellow Tiger grad Maddie Bacckai. Princeton has already played against Class of 2020 grads MaryKate Neff and Grace Brightbill, who are both grad students at Duke.

Old Friends, Part 2
Princeton head coach Carla Tagliente and top assistant coach Dina Rizzo are both Maryland alums who played for current Terps coach Missy Meharg.

Tagliente graduated in 2001 as the Maryland career leader in goals and points, and she still is second in points and third in goals. She was a four-time All-American, including first-team honors as a sophomore, junior and senior. She was a two-time finalist for the Honda Broderick Award as the nation's top player. She was also a three-time CoSIDA Academic All-American, including first-team honors as a junior and senior.

Rizzo was a first-team All-American herself (not to mention a 2008 U.S. Olympian). Both Tagliente and Rizzo coached under Meharg after graduating, and Rizzo was the associate head coach before joining Tagliente after Tagliente left the head coaching job at UMass at Princeton in 2016.

Tagliente and Rizzo were teammates on Maryland's 1999 NCAA championship team.

Series History
Maryland leads the all-time series against Princeton 25-9-1. The teams first played on Oct. 29, 1981, a game Princeton won 2-0. The great Martha Russo became the first Princeton field hockey player to score against Maryland when she did so 42 seconds into that game; Russo was headed to the 1984 Olympics before two major knee injuries ended her career. Linda Riefler had the other Princeton goal in the game, and Sue Kohler had the shutout in goal.

Fast-forwarding, the most recent game between the two was an excruciating one for the Tigers, who lost 4-3 on a goal with one-tenth of a second left in the second overtime. Sammy Popper, now a junior, had one of the Princeton goals in the game (Clara Roth had the other two).

Princeton and Maryland played in that 1981 game and again in 1982, 1983 and 1984. The teams did not meet against until 1997, but they have played every year (sometimes more than once) since other than the COVID season a year ago.

Goal Oriented
Princeton and Maryland both rank in the top 20 nationally in scoring offense. To be precise, Maryland ranks 15^th, with 2.83 goals per game. One spot behind is Princeton, who averages 2.80 goals per game.

Princeton has six different players with at least one goal: Yeager (six), Popper, Lily Webb and Claire Donovan (two each) and Grace Schulze and Zoe Shephard one each.

Broken down by class, Princeton has gotten eight goals from freshmen, one from a sophomore and four from juniors. Princeton has no seniors this season.