The No. 6 Virginia field hockey team fell 4-3 on the road Thursday afternoon against No. 20 Iowa. The loss comes on the heels of a 3-0 defeat against No. 8 Penn State on Sunday, and the Cavaliers have now lost consecutive regular season games for the first time since 2011.
Iowa opened the scoring 6:27 into the game with a close range shot from senior midfielder Dani Hemeon, but Virginia sophomore striker Caleigh Foust responded three minutes later to level the score. Hawkeye junior forward Natalie Cafone put her team back on top with a goal at 13:26, then added another at 32:54 to give Iowa a 3-1 halftime lead.
Fewer than six minutes after the break, Foust tallied her second goal of the day to bring Virginia back within one, but Cafone completed the hat trick at 50:32 to push the Hawkeyes’ lead back to two. Sophomore striker Riley Tata narrowed the deficit to a single goal for the Cavaliers after scoring at 61:52 off a penalty corner, but the team failed to close the gap and fell by a final line of 4-3 in Iowa City.
Despite two losses, it’s still early in the season for a youth-filled Virginia squad. Two of the Cavaliers’ top four scorers last season, Foust and Tata, are tied for the team lead in goals with three apiece. All four Virginia players with at least two scores — sophomore Lucy Hyams and freshman Emilie van Zinnicq Bergmann in addition to Foust and Tata — are sophomores or younger, and the team is expected to improve as they gain more experience through the season.
After playing their first three games on the road, the Cavaliers open the their home schedule against No. 7 Princeton Sunday at 11:30 a.m. at University Hall Turf Field.
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