NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Throughout the 2021 season, the Yale field hockey team has rallied around three words: Hope, Fight and Love. The season finale Saturday afternoon at Johnson Field provided the Bulldogs with the opportunity to showcase aspects of all three of those words -- and the result was an emotional 2-1 come-from-behind win over Cornell on Senior Day.
 
The Bulldogs initially embraced those words when they began the season -- Yale's 50th as a varsity program -- after not having played since November of 2019 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The words represented concepts that had helped the Bulldogs get through a tumultuous year and a half in which they were often physically apart but never far from each other's minds. The belief that there were better days ahead, combined with their competitive spirit and their camaraderie, had kept them going. 
 
Throughout that time, the Bulldogs were led by a unique senior class that included some players who started their Yale careers in 2017, then had their careers disrupted -- but ultimately not ended -- by the pandemic. 
 
The day thus began with a special Senior Day ceremony, honoring five Bulldogs: forward Anissa Abboud '21 (who played this season as a student in Yale's School of Public Health thanks to a waiver by the Ivy League allowing members of the Class of 2021 to play at their schools as graduate students in 2021-22), midfielder Iliana Cabral, midfielder Imogen Davies, forward/midfielder Kelly Dolan and midfielder Sarah King. Four of the five had started their Yale careers in 2017. 
 
Entering Saturday the Bulldogs had won 34 games since that group joined the team -- the most by a Yale class in eight years. 
 
They all wanted one more.  
 
Yale (9-8, 4-3 Ivy League) had reasons for optimism heading into Saturday's finale. The Bulldogs had won four of their last five games, and in each of their league games they were either ahead, tied or within a goal of their opponent at some point in the third or fourth quarter. They had shown that they could compete with anybody.
 
Cornell (8-9, 3-4 Ivy League) would not go down easily, however. The Big Red struck first on this particular day, with defender Caroline Ramsey -- cousin of Yale first-year forward Lily Ramsey -- scoring on a penalty corner at 6:44. 
 
Yale outshot Cornell 9-4 in the first half but went into halftime trailing 1-0. There was still plenty of fight left in the Bulldogs, though. Entering the day they had outscored their opponents 28-18 in the second halves of games this year. In the first five minutes of the third quarter Saturday, they took control with a pair of penalty corner goals -- and Davies, Yale's captain, scored them both. 
 
As Yale's primary inserter Davies usually racks up assists, not goals, on corners. She is fifth on the Bulldogs' career assist list with 27. On Saturday, however, she put herself in position to get two of the biggest tallies of her career. On the first, a series of passes after her insert left her with a wide-open net and she tapped in a rebound of a shot by Dolan for the game-tying goal at 31:27. On the second, she got a piece of a drive by junior midfielder Théodora Dillman, deflecting in the go-ahead goal at 34:15.
 
For those who have watched Davies' career, which includes three All-Ivy League honors, it was no surprise that she would be central to a win on Senior Day.
 
"She had one of her best games ever," said Pam Stuper, Yale's Caroline Ruth Thompson '02 Head Coach of Field Hockey. "She made sure we won. She played great on both sides of the ball, and she finished."
 
The Yale defense took care of the rest, allowing Cornell only one shot on goal in the second half. Sophomore goalkeeper Luanna Summer stuffed that attempt, by forward Olivia Friedberg early in the fourth quarter, for her second save of the day.
 
The final minute provided one more highlight. By that point Cabral, Davies, Dolan and King had all made it into the game. Abboud -- who had been sidelined since the third game of the year -- made Senior Day complete by subbing in for the end of Saturday's game and capping her comeback. As the final seconds ticked off, she and the rest of the Bulldogs mobbed each other to celebrate one last time. 
 
"Today you saw the three things that this team is all about," said Stuper. "We had hope, but we had to fight for this game. And you saw the love that these players have for each other, for the game, and for competition."

????ANOTHER YALE GOAL! Captain Imogen Davies scores again, and we take a 2-1 lead on Cornell in the 3rd quarter!

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— Yale Field Hockey (@YaleFieldHockey) November 6, 2021