Rutgers Field Hockey leads Olympic sports

Field Hockey 4-2

The field hockey team opened the weekend action of sports with a solid win over Ohio, 7-4 at home. Freshman Kikki Santore recorded a hat trick to go along with her two assists. Redshirt freshman Megan Cunningham and senior Kimberly Jevic score their first career goals in the first half, with Jevic tallying twice overall. Devon Freshnock added a second half tally. The scoring by younger players is a positive sign for the Knights.

"Scoring seven goals today was a real positive," head coach Meredith Civico said. "Going in to this game, finishing our opportunities was a real focus of ours, and I thought the team did a really nice job of that. We had a lot of different goal scorers, which is really exciting. We have to tighten up some areas, but overall I'm happy with the win."

And the hits just kept on coming as the team also topped Cornell at home on Sunday, 4-2. Linde van Schaik, Freshnock, Katie Larmour and Santore all tallied goals to hand the Big Red their first loss of the season (3-1). Rutgers now has a three-game winning streak.

“Our strong first half was critical to our success,” Civico said. “Establishing that early lead put the pressure on Cornell. It was fantastic to have four different goal scorers today. This whole weekend, scoring seven goals against Ohio and then four today, puts us in a really good place going towards conference play. This was a big game for us against a very good team, and it’s great to remain undefeated at home.”

The women are off until next Sunday when they host Siena at 1:00 pm.

Volleyball 4-6 (all tournament play)

Rutgers volleyball dropped its final two matches on day two of Hilton Penn's Landing Cherry & White Challenge, suffering straight set losses to Cleveland State (7-2) and Temple (4-3).

Senior right side Lauren Cloyd earned All-Tournament honors. Cloyd led the team with a .310 hitting percentage and a total of 34 kills. The senior averaged 3.40 kills per set on the weekend.

Despite its record and the three losses over the weekend (3-1 loss to New Hampshire on Friday), Rutgers faced two of the 11 NCAA qualifiers that it will cross paths with this season in New Hampshire and Cleveland State.

Volleyball hosts its own tournament next weekend, hosting Princeton, University of Seattle, and Seton Hall. The women open Big Ten play on Sept. 21, hosting Penn State at the College Avenue Gym.

Men’s Soccer 0-4

It has been a challenging, frustrating, and very disappointing start to the men’s soccer season. Granted, they faced ranked opponents in the early going, the team has yet to score and is now into the Big Ten conference portion of its season. The scoreless and winless season continued on Friday at Michigan State as the Spartans downed the Knights, 4-0.

"We came out, had a good game plan and executed it throughout the first half. We gave up a late goal, but we still had 45 minutes to try and get the equalizer, if not more," said head coach Dan Donigan. "I thought we started off the second half well. We were both battling back and forth, but it's little individual mistakes that led to the difference."

Cross Country

Both men and women at Penn State in the Harry Groves Spiked Shoe Invitational

Men

Rutgers men’s cross country finished seventh at the Spiked Shoe Invitational Saturday afternoon in University Park, Pennsylvania. Sophomore Conor Murphy led the Scarlet Knights with a 19th-place time at the Blue and White 5K course. Three other Scarlet Knights finished within the top 50 of participants, as senior Nicholas Price (27:52.7, 36th), junior Luke Wiley (28:11.9, 49th) and junior Trent Brinkofski (28:13.1, 50th) all contributed to the team total.

Women

Allyson Black finished ninth as the Rutgers women’s cross country team opened up the 2016 season on Saturday at the Harry Groves Spiked Invitational on Saturday. Rutgers placed sixth overall while host No. 13 Penn State won the invitational title for the fifth-straight season. Senior Kaitlyn Bedard finished in 38th in a time of 23:48 and was followed by five Scarlet Knight freshmen making their RU debuts. Immediately behind Bedard was Nadia Saponara in 39th (23:49) along with Emma Bergman in 41st (24:01), Stephanie Mauer in 42nd (24:04), Lou Mialhe in 44th (24:12) and Kelsey Farbanish in 49th (25:09).

“We ran against four nationally ranked teams today and I thought the freshmen were solid in their collegiate debut,” said head coach James Robinson. “For them, it wasn’t only their first collegiate race, but the first time running the longer distance.”

Men’s Golf

After the first day of action, Rutgers men’s golf is tied for 10th with a 10-over-par 298 scorecard produced Sunday at the Badger Invitational in Madison, Wisconsin.

Iowa State and Illinois State lead the field with two-under-par 286 team marks. Host Wisconsin sits in third with an even 288 team total.

Play continues today at the 13 team event.

Wrestling

Rutgers Athletics announced that for the second-straight year, Rutgers wrestling has sold the most season tickets in program history, once again surpassing the 1,000-ticket mark. The Scarlet Knights will wrestle five matches at the Rutgers Athletic Center this upcoming season and host Princeton for the “Battle at the Birthplace” at High Point Solutions Stadium, presented by Autoland, on Nov. 19.

Each wrestling season ticket purchased for the 2016-2017 season and future seasons will factor into the current season tickets purchased, consecutive years of purchase, and loyalty points categories of Priority Points.