The University of Lincoln’s Women’s Hockey 1st team fought off the adverse weather conditions to beat Staffordshire 5-0 at the Sports Centre.
The game started in bright sunlight with the hosts dominating the early stages playing some neat hockey and managing a few shots on goal.
However for all the dominance that Lincoln had, the first big chance fell to Staffordshire.
The Lincoln defence fell asleep and a Staffordshire forward received the ball in acres of space in the middle of the area.
However goalkeeper Hannah Reynolds came rushing off of her line and made an astounding save to make sure the scores are level.
Lincoln needed a goal quickly as even though it was rare, when Staffordshire broke they did look dangerous. And luckily they soon got one.
Former LincSport Player of the Month nominee Izzy Parry drove in from the right and caused chaos in the box and eventually Parry converted a chance of her own creating.
The home side continued to dominate although they were wasteful with their penalty corners, especially when Nora Just blasted her shot high and wide.
But when the hail and snow started to fall, Lincoln started to finish off these chances.
In this horrible weather the ball was played into the box and after some a scramble, Lucy Powell-Lewis smashed it home into the top corner.
Almost instantly after this, Lincoln extended their lead as the ball was played into the box and Powell-Lewis scored another to put the hosts in total control at the break.
After half-time Staffordshire came back into the game, having more and had more of the ball, but they failed to break through a Lincoln defence which had become much more resolute.
And Lincoln sealed their win when another good ball was put into the box and at the far post it ended up in the back the back of the net.
Officially it went down as an own goal, but Steph Brennan did try to claim it as her own.
From there on in Lincoln aimed to slow the game down in order to preserve their victory but they did add to the score.
Holly Sinclair went on a driving run on the right wing with the Staffordshire defence seemingly clearing out of the way and she played a perfect pass to Powell-Lewis who tapped in at the far post to complete her hat-trick.
After that the game fizzled out and apart from the pitch showing its slipperiness with a few comedy pratfalls from the Lincoln players, they played the game out to seal a comfortable 5-0 victory.
Women’s Hockey Captain Rachel Bradley:
“I think we played really well in both the first and second half.”
“Personally the whole team work so well as a team. Every goal we seem to score is a team effort so I’m really happy with that.”
“Any opponent we take with a pinch of salt and they (Staffordshire) are really sassy. Their coach is sassy they’re sassy.”
On Varsity: “It’ll be good day, if we win it’ll be sick but even if we don’t we’ll make it a sick day.”