Box Score Middletown, Conn. - Senior captain forward
Caroline Snite (Philadelphia, Pa.) scored the game-winning goal from sophomore midfielder
Julia Rivera (Bethesda, Md.) with 11:04 left in the second half to lead the visiting Trinity College Bantams to a 2-1 victory over the Wesleyan University Cardinals in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) regular-season finale for both teams this afternoon. Trinity, ranked No. 11 in the nation, closes the year at 10-4 overall and 6-4 in the NESCAC, earning the No. 5 seed in the NESCAC tournament, while Cardinals close at 8-6 overall 4-6 in the league and settle for the league tourney's No. 7 seed. Trinity will visit No. 4-seeded Tufts on Saturday and Wesleyan will travel to No. 2-seeded Amherst the same day.
Trinity got the game-winner off a well-executed corner started by junior
Alanna Capasso (Weston, Mass.). Her pass to the top of the circle found senior Payton Sword (Princeton, N.J.), who passed to Rivera on her right. Rivera sent the ball goalward and Snite one-timed it inside the left post to avenge a 1-0 loss to the Cardinals last fall. The Bantams had drawn first blood just 3:57 into the contest as Sword inserted a corner to junior midfielder
Haley Thompson (Ipswich, Mass.). Thompson threaded the ball through the middle to junior forward
Hadley Duncan (Rye, N.Y. ) who quickly knocked the ball past Wesleyan junior goalie Tori Redding.
The Cardinals tied the count roughly nine minutes later when senior Liz Chabot stole the ball from the Trinity defense and beat Bantam senior captain goalie
Gina Dinallo (West Hartford, Conn.) one-on-one. Trinity had near misses in the final seconds of the first half when a shot by Thompson off a penalty corner sailed just left of the cage, and at the 21:10 mark of the second half when Thompson and Duncan executed an identical play on a corner as the first Bantam goal but Duncan's shot was wide to the right.
Dinallo finished the game with six stops, including two acrobatic stops in the 19th minute and three consecutive stymies on back-to-back-to back Wesleyan penalty corners midway through the second half, while Redding did not record a save on five Trinity shots. Trinity leads the overall series vs. Wesleyan, 29-10-1, and each of the last seven battles between the squads has resulted in a one-goal decision.
