Whether it be snow, sunshine, driving rain or the Vermont Catamounts, Anna Poponyak wasn’t fazed by anything she faced Sunday.
The fifth-year senior goaltender saved 12 shots as Oregon defeated Vermont 10-6 Sunday at a soggy Papé Field. Fans and players were treated to two snowstorms during the game, with rain and intermittent sunshine filling the space in between, but Poponyak’s clutch saves in goal for the Ducks stole the story away from Mother Nature. Poponyak stopped all eight free position shots by Vermont (2-3), while the Ducks (4-2) converted 4-of-6 from the same distance that was the difference.
“Two snowstorms in a 60-minute period – it’s sort of crazy,” Oregon head coach Jen Larsen said.
Poponyak felt extra motivation against a team in Vermont whose assistant coach is a former teammate of hers, and a club that Oregon narrowly defeated 11-10 in overtime last year.
“I always want to prove that I can play at a high level against them,” said Poponyak, who called it one of the best performances all season. “I really want to show them what I’ve done in my five years at Oregon.”
The low-scoring game came two days after Oregon dispatched Fresno State 20-0 in its highest scoring game ever, as well as its first shutout in program history. Poponyak didn’t face a single shot in goal during her 20 minutes of playing time on Friday night, and came into Sunday with extra rest.
“I think the team just rallied around her and she stepped up with some great saves,” Larsen said. “It was a good rhythm that we got on Friday night when the challenge was to dominate for 60 minutes and today was just to compete for 60 minutes.”
Freshmen midfielders Catherine Davidson and Jana Drummond led Oregon with two goals apiece, and Davidson led the team with three points. Vermont’s Allison Pfohl scored a game-high three goals.
Tied 4-4 at half, Larsen told her team to treat the game as a 0-0 tie and asked for them to take the momentum at the outset. But even she likely didn’t expect senior defender Alicia Burkhart to take the opening draw and race to the Vermont goal with a goal in the half’s first eight seconds.
The goal was the first of four straight unanswered goals by the Ducks that stretched their lead to 8-4 with 18:45 left in the last half on freshman attacker Bina Barrett’s goal from senior midfielder Casey Rector.
“Alicia as a captain, as a leader, was really the one who took us to the other level,” Larsen said.
“It’s probably as fast as you can do it,” said Burkhart, who has seven goals on the season, although she said this was the fastest of her career. “It can be done; I’ve seen it happen a lot to get it right off the draw.”
Vermont’s two second-half goals came in a three-minute span that temporarily brought them to within two goals as the last snowstorm dumped on the crowd. Poponyak stopped the Catamounts’ chance to score against when she stopped a free-position shot with 7:43 left that brought a chorus of cheers from the Oregon bench.
A free-position goal by Oregon freshman midfielder Jess Drummond with 5:10 left regained a measure of breathing room, while her sister Jana capped the afternoon with a goal from Davidson with two seconds left in the game.
Neither team pulled more than one goal ahead in the first half as they traded goals. Poponyak was a major reason why. Twice on consecutive shots inside the eight-meter line she saved shots by Vermont with more than 12 minutes left in the first. With Oregon hanging onto the tie with 1:08 left in the first half, Vermont’s Megan MacDonald fired a shot from point-blank range in front of the Oregon goal, only to have Poponyak save it.
Larsen said the short breakdowns on defense in the second half that kept Vermont in the game weren’t a major concern because she knew what kind of a game Poponyak was having.
“When you’ve got Pop making saves like that you can pretty much get fired up,” Larsen said.
The Ducks will rest a week before playing Johns Hopkins in Eugene on Sunday, March 15.
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