Yale’s midfielders tore up Cal’s defense throughout the game as Georgia Holland provided two assists for fellow midfielders Emily Schuckert and Nicole Wells. The Bulldogs exposed a frail Bears’ defense, one that has allowed 13 goals and 78 shots in their current four-game losing streak.

Shots coming from the Yale side were few, but well-placed. The Bulldogs’ offense took only 13 and beat Cal’s star goalie Courtney Hendrickson a total of three times. Two goals came off penalty corners caused by what can best be described as foolish mistakes by an overly aggressive defense. Forward Erica Borgos’ early second-half goal proved to be the nail in the coffin for a Cal team that came out flat.

“Our defense is hurting right now — that’s definitely something we need to work on,” said coach Shellie Onstead.

Momentum favored the Bulldogs, who seemed to have clinched the win early on in the match and never looked back. The Bears, however, would not go down quietly in the second half.

The Bulldogs defense seemed unprepared for the impending firestorm that would be midfielder Lara Kruggel in the second half. In the 60th minute of play, one of Kruggel’s shots — she had six throughout the game — shook the back of the net and lifted the spirits of what had appeared to be a beaten Bears unit. It took only six more minutes for Kruggel to find the goal again and cut the deficit to only one goal.

“Lara has been playing injured, so for her to push through and get back to what she’s good at was awesome,” Onstead said.

There finally seemed to be some life in the Cal offense, which hasn’t been relevant since the Bears’ near upset of Duke several weeks ago.

With only five minutes left in the game, Onstead took Hendrickson out of the cage and put her on the attack, desperately trying to give her squad a chance with the extra man and a shot at their fifth bout of overtime this season. The Yale defense, however, did not falter, fending off the pressing Bears offense in the closing minutes of the second half and earning the team’s fourth victory of the season.

“A lot of this game was just about having faith in your team. That you can come back and win. I was really pleased that the girls didn’t give up out there and fought until the end,” Onstead said.

The Bears have now dropped four in a row, which has been unheard of under coach Onstead’s leadership. “We have a very good program here. We need to start playing strong fundamental field hockey,” Onstead said.

Cal will look to do just that against a strong UC Davis team on the road this Sunday.

Christian Legg covers field hockey. Contact him at clegg@dailycal.org.

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Nathaniel Solley/File

The Cal field hockey team (4-7, 1-2 NorPac) looks to rebound from a three-game losing streak as it awaits the arrival of the Yale Bulldogs this Saturday. The squad will then take a short trip to visit UC Davis as its season begins to wind down.

The Bears return from a harsh road trip on which they lost two in a row to No. 7 North Carolina and No. 8 Duke. These are losses that, while not entirely unexpected, threaten to throw a wrench in team morale. They will now try to turn around their so-far mediocre season and find form ahead of the NorPac Tournament as they look to make some noise in the postseason.

“We are just focusing on getting better each week and putting the North Carolina game behind us,” said coach Shellie Onstead.

On Saturday at 1 p.m., Cal will host a Yale squad (3-6, 1-2 Ivy League) that has struggled thus far despite having a good side on paper. The team has continued an up-and-down season, with losses against powerhouses Princeton and Virginia intertwined with wins vs. bottom-dwellers Harvard and Quinnipiac.

This should be a winnable game for the Bears, but Yale boasts some impressive players who are capable of being dangerous when firing. Senior forward Erica Borgo leads the Ivy League in assists with seven, while teammate senior midfielder Emily Schuckert is just behind her at six. Junior goalkeeper Heather Schlesier has also provided impressive play with a .756 save percentage, putting her third in the Ivy League. This solidity on both ends of the field makes Yale far from being a pushover, but the Bears will be confident of a win if they can play to their full potential in front of the home fans.

“(This will be) a tight match,” Onstead said. “A lot of it is going to come down to the midfielders.”

After their meeting with Yale, the Bears will play another struggling team in the form of UC Davis (3-7, 1-0 NorPac) on Sunday at 3 p.m. The Aggies come into the game fresh off an impressive upset win against the Stanford Cardinal to continue a two-game win streak, yet they still maintain a poor record due to seven-game losing run earlier in the season. The Aggies will hope to build on their last few impressive performances to end the final weeks of the season on a high note before the all-important NorPac Tournament, in which they will fight for an NCAA Tournament berth.

This game will be UC Davis’ Play4theCure game, which will highlight the National Foundation for Cancer Research’s work. The Aggies boast NorPac Players of the Week in senior forward Cloey LemMon and freshman forward Agustina Singh, who lead the front line and will be sure to attract plenty of attention from Cal’s defenders.

Although Cal’s season hasn’t gone as planned, it isn’t all bad for the Bears, as goalkeeper Courtney Hendrickson looks to continue her stellar run in the net. She earned NorPac Defensive Player of the week honors for the third time this season after saving an impressive 30 shots on goal over the last two games, including a career- and program-best 18 saves against the Tar Heels. Hendrickson is fifth in the nation in save percentage and 11th nationally in saves per game.

Although she will have her hands full against Yale and UC Davis, the confidence accumulated from a season of consistent excellence will hold her in good stead as she provides the security blanket for a porous Bears defense. If Hendrickson can keep up her good form, and if the team can shake off recent disappointments to up their game against eminently vulnerable teams, Cal will build up vital momentum toward the season’s end.

Glenn Borok covers field hockey. Contact him at gborok@dailycal.org.

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Nathaniel Solley/File

It was a David-and-Goliath matchup from the very start as the unranked Cal field hockey team (4-8, 1-2 NorPac) traveled to Chapel Hill to square off against the No. 3 North Carolina (9-2, 8-1 ACC). There was, however, no sign of divine intervention to be found, as Cal was beaten decidedly in a 4-0 rout to finish out its two-game road trip.

After taking only seven shots in an overtime loss to Duke, coach Shellie Onstead’s offense managed a dismal two shots against the powerful Tar Heels. The lack of offensive production appears to be in large part due to the absence of forward Andrea Earle, who was not in the starting lineup Sunday.

Earle is responsible for more than a quarter of the total shots and a third of the goals produced by Cal this season. Her presence was sorely missed, as the Tar Heels defense shut down any signs of an attack from the Bears’ offense.

North Carolina managed to expose every weakness in the Cal defense, pelting goalie Courtney Hendrickson with 40 shots. Hendrickson, in the barrage, did manage to set a school record for saves in a single match with 18, eclipsing her previous career high by six stops. This Herculean effort proved to be futile, as the Tar Heels established their dominance early and kept the Bears on the defensive for the majority of the match.

“(North Carolina) was concerned enough about us that they came at us pretty hard early and put a lot of pressure on the backfield,” Onstead said to Cal Athletics after the match. “It was a good game plan on their part, and we couldn’t get going. We had a hard time getting out of the backfield early, and it made it hard for us.”

Goals were scored by four different Tar Heels, two coming off of penalty corners. Midfielder Nina Notman and forward Loren Shealy — the two top scorers for North Carolina this season — each added a goal to their already impressive stat sheets. Midfielder Emily Wold had an assist and drove her season total up to 12 in what appeared to be little more than an exhibition of talent for a Tar Heels squad that competes in arguably the most competitive conference in collegiate field hockey.

While the Tar Heels were rolling, the Bears faced the same obstacle that has plagued their season: lack of offensive prowess. Cal has allowed 11 goals over four games and has been outshot 68-23 in its current three-game skid.

“I’m disappointed we didn’t put up a better game after Friday,” Onstead said to CalBears.com in reference to Cal’s near upset of juggernaut Duke just two days prior.

The Bears sit in third place in the NorPac West and will seek an opportunity to rebound against the struggling Yale next week in Berkeley. Onstead’s squad desperately needs a win  if it is to simply regain some of the confidence lost in the downturn.

Due to poor offensive play, the Bears are backed up deep into a corner, and they will need to come out fighting if there is any hope for them to recover what seems to be a lost season.

Christian Legg covers field hockey. Contact him at clegg@dailycal.org.

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Derek Remsburg/File

This weekend, the Cal field hockey team (4-5, 1-2 NorPac) will travel to North Carolina to compete in two of the toughest games of the season.

The team, coming off a split of two games against NorPac rival Pacific, will first travel to Durham to face the No. 16 Duke Blue Devils (8-2, 1-0 ACC) on Friday at 3 p.m. This will be followed by a Sunday matchup against the No. 3 Tar Heels of the University of North Carolina. This North Carolina excursion is the Bears’ second of three East Coast trips for the season.

“It’s a good opportunity to make a statement and measure ourselves up against the best,” said coach Shellie Onstead. “We continue to make adjustments if we don’t have everyone 100 percent, and it may not show in the scoreline, but we are getting better every day.”

The Blue Devils are riding high, coming off a three-game winning streak that included a 5-4 shootout win over rivals North Carolina (8-1, 1-1 ACC). While there has been a lot of talk over the great play of Cal goalkeeper Courtney Hendrickson, Duke enjoys similarly exceptional play from their net-minder, Lauren Blazing.

The redshirt sophomore received last week’s ACC Player of the Week award for her performance against the then-No.1 Tar Heels. She recorded 22 saves as the Blue Devils beat their rivals for the first time since 2006, handing North Carolina its first regular-season ACC loss in three years. She made a critical stop in the shootout that decided the game and then went on to record four saves in Duke’s most recent win, by a score of 3-1, against Longwood University, the leader of the NorPac East Division.

After facing Duke, the Bears will play at Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels will be looking to rebound after their performance against Duke and likely will fancy their chances against a Cal side carrying some injuries in important parts of the field. North Carolina includes 10 new freshmen this season, but the squad will hope to overcome its relative inexperience to continue its winning pattern. The Tar Heels have played in the NCAA National Championship in each of the last four years, winning only once.

The game, starting at 10 a.m., will be an even tougher assignment than Duke for the Bears. The Tar Heels boast a high-scoring and devastating attack led by sophomore forward Casey Di Nardo and junior forward Charlotte Craddock, the leading scorer from last season.

“I know both of those programs well, and they play a quality game, like a lot of our opponents,” Onstead said. “UNC has a pretty powerful attack, and Duke is just a well-structured team. We are going to have to play a good game against both of them.”

Hendrickson has received plenty of positive reviews as she carries on in the best form of her collegiate career, and she will need to turn in another solid performance to repel the attackers of the two North Carolina sides. In their most recent game, against Pacific, Cal was missing three key starters from its lineup, but the team hopes to have these players back to add more of a spine as well as keep down the minutes of all the players to avoid fatigue.

Still, there is no denying that the injuries, in conjunction with the quality of the Bears’ opponents, make the Bears definite underdogs and likely to see their record drop to 4-7. At the same time, there is plenty of positive spirit within the squad, and Onstead and her charges will nonetheless relish the opportunity to see how they match up against two of the best teams in the nation.

Glenn Borok covers field hockey. Contact him at gborok@dailycal.org.

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After taking only one shot on goal in Palo Alto last week, the Bears took to the practice field this week with a newfound conviction and a particular focus on offense — more specifically, on ball control and possession.

“We gave up too many turnovers in the middle of the field and in the attacking third,” Onstead said.

Fortunately for Cal, the Tigers’ defense has been dormant all season, allowing almost four goals per game.

The Bears likely will look to junior forward Andrea Earle for much of their offensive productivity. She leads the team with 14 shots and four goals after coming back from an injury last season. Earle earned All-America honors in 2011 and looks to continue her stellar season against the struggling Pacific defense.

This game, at least on the surface, appears to be little more than a chance for a hushed Cal offense — one that has scored only once in its last three games — to build up some confidence before tackling the bulk of its schedule.

The Tigers’ offense has been weak, averaging just one goal per game, and has often had trouble keeping up with opponents throughout the season. Against Cal, it will have to find a way around standout goalie Courtney Hendrickson if it hopes to take home the much needed win.

Hendrickson has shined in the cage, saving 10 or more shots in two games this season and accumulating a .807 save percentage. She has emerged as one of the top goalkeepers in the country and has kept the Cal squad competitive in many of its matches this season.

“Courtney has a lot more confidence this year,” Onstead said. “The focus she has placed on technical skills has been phenomenal.”

If there is any hope for the Tigers, it will need to come on offense. Cal’s defense is hurting after giving up a season-high three goals against Stanford and allowing six goals in its current three-game slide. The Bears’ defense will have to be prepared to handle senior forward Melissa Maultsby, who has had goals in three of the last four games for the Tigers and looks to have a breakout performance against Cal. The Bears defense needs to watch the whole field, as senior midfielder Emily Tregoning has provided the bulk of the Tigers’ assists this year and is always a threat to put the ball in scoring position.

Cal cannot afford to overlook any possible threats coming from a determined Pacific squad. This is a match the Bears must win if they wish to remain contenders in the NorPac Conference.

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Derek Remsburg/Senior Staff

Despite an impressive game by Cal field hockey goalkeeper Courtney Hendrickson, the team (3-4, 0-1 NorPac) fell 3-0 to Stanford (6-1, 1-0 NorPac) in Palo Alto on Friday afternoon.

The Bears were on the defensive for most of the contest, with the Cardinal outshooting their opponents 18-1 and dominating the penalty corner advantage 9-0. As a result, the Bears were held scoreless for only the second time in this young season. The loss extended Cal’s losing streak to three games after back-to-back defeats at the hands of No. 12 Northwestern and Ohio. Meanwhile, Stanford extended its winning streak to six games after losing its opener to No. 4 Connecticut.

“They’re a very strong team,” said Cal head coach Shellie Onstead to CalBears.com. “We had a hard time getting our feet under us at first. We allowed our goalie to have a really great game but probably gave them more shots than they needed to have.”

The scoring began after just seven minutes when Stanford midfielder Alex McCawley hit a rocket into the back of the net from the top of the circle to put the Cardinal in front. The goal was McCawley’s first of the season, making her the ninth Stanford player to find the back of the net in the seven games this season. In the 34th minute, McCawley received a yellow card, giving Cal a man advantage for a short period of time.

A second goal came in the 48th minute from defender Kelsey Harbin off a textbook penalty corner. With the game seemingly in the bag, McCawley added to the lead, as she scored later in the 60th minute of regulation to end any hope of a Cal comeback. The goal came off of a rebound after Hendrickson made the save from the initial penalty corner shot.

It took until the 35th minute for Cal’s first shot on goal, which came from forward Nicole Wallstedt; it was the first shot that Cardinal had allowed in over 106 minutes of play. This allowed Stanford goalkeeper Dulcie Davies to have an easy day, making only one save over 70 minutes of play.

While Hendrickson couldn’t keep the Bears in the game, she still shined as one of the best players on the field. She showcased her athleticism alongside her general tactical awareness, as she consistently managed to take up good positions and demonstrated her fast reflexes. With 12 saves, including five in the first half, she set a career high and singlehandedly kept her team competitive against a powerful Stanford performance.

“Courtney is definitely on her game and showing the athletic ability and decision-making that is top-level,” Onstead said to CalBears.com. “I’m really impressed with her. I’m sorry she has to do so much work, but she’s doing great.”

Overall, the loss puts the team at 3-4 for the season — 0-1 in the NorPac conference play and 0-2 away from home. Although it has been a slow opening to the season, the Bears are confident of turning things around and will look to quickly regroup for a two-game series later in the week against Pacific. The Bears also will see the Cardinal later in their regular-season finale on Halloween in Berkeley, by which time Cal will hope to have improved enough to give its rival more of an even game.

Glenn Borok covers field hockey. Contact him at gborok@dailycal.org.

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Kore Chan/Staff

In the middle of one October night in 2001, Claire Dougherty was jostled awake by her father, Tim, who struggled to stay calm.

For two hours, he drove Claire and her older sister Colleen from their home in Santa Clara, Calif., to Sacramento, where Claire’s mother Margaret and her brother were staying for his basketball tournament.

The impromptu trip did not strike Dougherty as strange. At 12 years old, she was more concerned with her interrupted sleep than the sudden visit.

Instead of a hotel room, however, Tim drove to a local hospital, where Dougherty saw a body of a woman covered in veil. Margaret had passed prior to their arrival with a heart-related affliction.

“I was in shock and kind of in denial because you never think that anything like that would happen with no warning like tomorrow’s never promised,” Dougherty says. “I think it was just shock.”

After shock came grief, and after grief came isolation. Before the death, Claire was an active child who played basketball, volleyball and soccer.

Afterward, she lost motivation to continue playing and shelled herself in.

The self-quarantine did not last. At the encouragement of her father, she slowly picked up the activities again. But now, Dougherty resumed her athletics, especially in field hockey, with a new purpose.

She was going to play to make Margaret proud. Dougherty remembered her mother always saying, “Honor your competition with your best performance.”

Every time she stepped on the field, she was going to honor her competition with her mother’s memory.

For the Dougherty family, sports are part of a family tradition.

Both Tim and Margaret were collegiate athletes at Santa Clara University; Tim played rugby, and Margaret played club volleyball. They passed their love of sports to Dougherty, who played a variety of sports.

Margaret raised Dougherty with an emphasis on the importance of sportsmanship and giving her all, lessons that extended further than just sports and into other aspects of her life.

“If you give your best performance, then they have to give their best performance, which is what you do in life whether it’s on the pitch or on the field or in the classroom,” Tim says.

Margaret encouraged Dougherty to play as many sports as possible, including field hockey. Colleen taught Dougherty the ropes of how to play beginning in sixth grade. By seventh grade, Dougherty was playing with a high school club team.

“(Colleen) really introduced me to the sport,” Dougherty says. “She loved it, so she would bring it home with her. She’d want to hit around in the back, so I was always that person.”

When Dougherty eventually had to choose between field hockey and volleyball for her fall sport in high school, Dougherty chose field hockey.

At Archbishop Mitty High School, Dougherty excelled in field hockey as a forward, garnering the attention of college programs like Cal. In 2007, Dougherty joined Shellie Onstead’s program at Berkeley.

This year, Dougherty’s collegiate career came to a close last Saturday at Virginia. And at the stands waiting for Dougherty that night was Tim, who flew all the way from California.

Tim and Colleen are permanent fixtures at Maxwell Family Field. Tim attended all of Dougherty’s home games at Maxwell Family Field, and both have been Dougherty’s biggest supporters.

“She enjoyed me being there and I enjoyed watching her play, and I knew it wasn’t going to be something she would get to do for the rest of her life,” he said. “I’m going to miss it, and she probably will too.”

Once every so often, when a family friend or an extended relative comes to see Dougherty play, he or she tells Tim how much she reminds him of Margaret. Dougherty’s height, facial features and her personality are like facsimiles to her late mother’s.

“It brings back a lot of memories for people when they see me,” Dougherty says. “It brings happiness for them because I’m so similar to her. But for me, it was sad to deal with because sometimes when I was younger, I thought I was reminding people of the sadness or the pain.”

With the absence of her mother, Claire took it upon herself to turn that sorrow and pain into pride for all those around her, especially her father.

“In my mind, he’s already lost someone that he’s loved and I would never want to jeopardize or put anything at risk to hurt him more. I just want to make him happy and proud,” Dougherty says.

“Now I’m so lucky to be able to let people reminisce that she’s living on through me.”

In her five-year stint at Cal, Dougherty was the most vocal player on the sidelines during a practice scrimmage, encouraging and criticizing her teammates.

In her recruited class of five freshmen, all except Dougherty left the team in or less than four years. As the lone fifth-year senior, Dougherty is the oldest and most experienced member of the team.

“I decided to stay because of the team,” she said. “Not that I owed it to the program or to the coaches, but my experience at Cal was so great that it was the least I could do.”

Dougherty believes she has given her all at Cal, just as her mother would have expected. Dougherty aimed to honor the program and her team with everything she had to offer, even at the cost of delaying her graduation.

Now that her field hockey career ends, Dougherty hopes that she made her mother proud.

In leaving Cal field hockey behind, Claire aims to honor her future with her best.

Jessica Lim covers field hockey. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org

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The closest the Bears (7-11, 2-4 in NorPac) have gotten to matching Cal’s current dismal record was a decade-worst 8-11 campaign in 2009. But that season, Cal made it all the way to the finals of the NorPac Conference tournament.

Cal won the first round of the tournament and will enter the semifinals on Friday against Stanford. In its first round against Longwood, Cal began the tournament at No. 3 in the West Division because of its weak NorPac record.

In order to have a chance at the NCAA tournament, the Bears must win all three rounds of the NorPac tournament.

“Tournament time is a good time because everybody feels like they have a chance and everybody does,” coach Shellie Onstead said.

Cal defeated No. 2 from the East Division Longwood, 5-1, Thursday night in its first round game. The Bears will continue in a semifinal game against No. 1 in the West Division Stanford on Friday afternoon.

The Bears and the Lancers (7-12, 6-2) were evenly matched for much of the first half. At the 24th minute, Cal made the only goal of the first half with forward Claire Dougherty’s goal off an assist by Rachelle Comeau to take the 1-0 lead.

In the second half, the Bears pulled farther away from the Lancers with four goals. Cal held a brief 5-0 lead before the Lancers were able to retaliate on the 62nd minute for a 5-1 score.

Though the Bears defeated Longwood, there were weaknesses in the defense. In the last 28 minutes, the Lancers fired 12 of its total 19 shots, outshooting the Bears’ 12 shots for the entire game.

The next round against No. 14 Stanford, however, has little room for mistakes.

This semifinal matchup between Cal and Stanford is unusual in the NorPac Conference. The Bears in the past four years faced the Cardinal in the championship round.

“I think it will be a nice change, so it will be nice to get them the second day where there’s not much pressure,” Onstead said before the Longwood game. “I expect to play them, and if it’s the second day instead of the third day, it’s no big deal to me.”

Cal has already lost twice to the Cardinal in the regular season. Last season, the Bears lost twice to Stanford in the regular season but beat the Cardinal in the championship round of the NorPac tournament.

Cal will approach this game as it has in its last two games against Davis and Longwood, in which the Bears defeated them by huge 6-0 and 5-1 deficits respectively. In those games, Cal focused on passing and changed its lineup, moving key players like Comeau from midfield to forward and Deanna Kennedy from defense to midfield.

“I like what we started doing (against Davis) in letting people interchange more and creating more trouble for the defending team,” Onstead said. “There’s a little more creativity in the attack, which should help us get some great opportunities.”

Jessica Lim covers field hockey. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org

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On Cal’s first possession, senior Rachelle Comeau passed the ball to fellow forward Claire Dougherty from the right side. Aggies goalie Danielle Herrington was out of the goal to defend Comeau, so Dougherty was able to sneak the ball past Herrington to give the Bears an early 1-0 lead only 63 seconds into the tilt.

Cal (6-11, 2-4) went on to conclude its season with a 6-0 rout over Davis (7-11, 3-3) in the Friday night game at Maxwell Family Field.

In the matchup, the Bears held an uncontested lead from the beginning. Cal’s lead gave the offense the necessary confidence to play an aggressive game.

“We played with a little more freedom,” coach Shellie Onstead said.  “I think immediately when we got the early goal, we just kinda took a deep breath.”

After this initial goal, the game showcased a sloppy and scattered Davis defense that could not hold against Cal and an offense that could not keep possession of the ball. The Bears grabbed the momentum and did not let go.

Cal doubled its lead at the 23rd minute with Jordan O’Reilly’s goal from another assist by Comeau, carrying a 2-0 lead at the end of the first half.

Confident in its early edge, Cal pulled away from Davis even more in the second half with little opposition. The Aggies had only one shot on goal in the first 50 minutes.

In the 45th minute, Dougherty added another goal to the Bears’ lead with a converted penalty to make the score 3-0. Cal again added another five minutes later with a goal from senior Kendra Bills, increasing the lead to 4-0.

In the 61st minute, Comeau added her own goal to the game with a shot from the right side off another assist by Kruggel.

Seven minutes later, Caroline Struijk took the ball past two defenders to Spellman. With no defenders around, Davis’ Herrington stepped out of the goal to Spellman, who passed over Herrington’s stick to Comeau, who found the back of the net for the final score of 6-0.

This team-oriented strategy of passing and strong communication was characteristic of the blowout victory against Davis.

“We finally started making better decisions inside the 25 for our scoring opportunities,”Onstead said. “Instead of just giving the ball away or choosing to go in when we should be going out and around — these sorts of things that give us better opportunities they did a much better job with tonight.”

Even with two key offensive players in Shannon Elmitt and Lauren Livingston out, the Bears were finally able to piece together a strong defense with an improved offense.

In the strong offensive performance, the Bears outshot the Aggies 14 to eight, which is a drastic improvement from the four shots the Bears had in their last game with Davis. Cal outmatched Davis in creating scoring opportunities, a problem that the Bears have had all season.

“Today was one of the best games that we’ve played all season,” Comeau said.

Jessica Lim covers field hockey. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org

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This Friday at 7 p.m., the Bears (5-11, 1-4 NorPac) will face the Aggies (6-10, 2-2) at Maxwell Field to end their season.

Stanford has already won the NorPac West division championship, but the NorPac champion is yet to be decided. Cal is ranked third in the West division and will likely stay there.

The NorPac champion, which will win an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, will be crowned at next week’s tournament between the West and East divisions.

This game is Cal’s last opportunity to secure a higher rank and secure a better bracket and a better playing schedule.

There is a sliver of hope that the Bears might leapfrog to second place.

The only way the team will move up to second is if Davis loses its next two games to Cal and Pacific.

Even then, this would tie Cal and Pacific for second place with identical records.

The major consequence of being third in the West division would be facing undefeated Stanford in the semifinals, a roadblock to the Bears’ NCAA hopes. The Davis game is the last opportunity for the Bears to break a four-game losing streak before entering tournament play.

After the first Stanford and Davis games, in which Cal only tallied five and four shots, respectively, the Bears moved key defenders to the midfield in an attempt to repair a disappointing offense.

This change paid off at first when Cal was able to create more opportunities. The offense, however, has still been lacking in its ability to convert shots to goals.

“We’ve made some changes in the midfield that I think worked out well,” coach Shellie Onstead said. “And the last piece is to make some changes in the frontline to give us more opportunities to finish. Friday will be critical for us as far as testing things out.”

After a disappointing loss to Stanford on Tuesday, the Bears are looking to fix some of their offensive errors.

With only four shots in the 2-0 loss to the Cardinal, Cal needs to repair its ineffective attack.

The Aggies will also be coming into Friday’s game with a four-game losing streak.  Davis’ last win this season came against the Bears on Sept. 30.

The Davis offense is led by leading scorer Cloey LemMon, who has seven goals and four assists, and Jamie Garcia, who has been the NorPac West’s Rookie of the Week four times this season.

Garcia has four goals, one of which came from the last game against Cal, and seven assists.

Cal’s low rank in the NorPac West conference will make the road to a NorPac championship more difficult than what the Bears underwent last year when entering the tournament with a higher rank.

“It’s just been a different journey,” Onstead said. “I’ve been humbled by the process in terms of the regular season results, but I still have a tremendous amount of faith in this group.”

Jessica Lim covers field hockey. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org

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