ITHACA – A day after Syracuse field hockey head coach Kathleen Parker described her team’s penalty corners as ‘completely ineffective,’ Kristin Aronowicz made sure Parker wouldn’t see a repeat performance.

Aronowicz scored twice on penalty corners last night as Syracuse defeated Cornell, 2-0. Last weekend, Syracuse converted none of its 19 penalty corners against Holy Cross and Massachusetts.

But Aronowicz ended that streak, taking a pass five minutes into the game from Ann-Marie Guglieri and drilling it past Big Red goalie Kaitlin Tierney.

‘Sometimes it just takes one to go in to get your confidence going,’ Aronowicz said. ‘We were more relaxed and composed on our corners.’

‘We just got in a rhythm today,’ Guglieri said. ‘In previous games, something always happened. We know we can score on corners.’

Syracuse proved the first goal wasn’t a fluke by converting on another corner midway through the second half.

Guglieri again fed Aronowicz, who eluded two Cornell defenders with a knee-locking cross-over and dribbled past Tierney while falling to the ground.

‘Sometimes you see an opportunity,’ Aronowicz said, ‘and you have to take it.’

The sudden production on corners baffled Parker.

‘Kristen wasn’t even (there) at the end of practice when we were working on corners (Monday),’ Parker said. ‘I can’t even say that we made her hit until her knuckles turned bloody.

‘There was no difference from (Holy Cross) to today. Sometimes they go in, sometimes they don’t. I’d like to say I had a magic formula for it.’

Cornell would like that formula. The Big Red converted none of their five corner opportunities, though one came close.

In the first half, Cornell executed a near-perfect corner, slipping a shot past SU goaltender Audrey Latskothat would have tied the game at 1. But the goal was waved off, much to the chagrin of Cornell forward Carissa Mirasol.

‘(The referees) said the shot went too high,’ Mirasol said. ‘But that definitely was a goal.’

Frustrated and perhaps focusing too much on the questionable call, Cornell created no other solid scoring chance from the corner.

‘It’s kind of like Penn State (who Syracuse has never beaten) and us,’ Parker said. ‘I know they’re always pumped to play us, and they come out very hard.’

Cornell’s intensity caused Syracuse to focus more on its corners and striking early.

‘We need to have this every single game we play,’ Aronowicz said. ‘We’ve won games before, but this is the first game we’ve felt really good about.’

Published on October 8, 2002 at 12:00 pm