Even horrendous weather and the absence of the leading scorer can't stop this team from winning.

The No. 6 Penn State field hockey team (14-3, 3-2 Big Ten), coming off an upset over No. 1 Old Dominion, earned another victory, this time with a 2-0 win over University of Pennsylvania. Junior midfielder Heather Conroy, who leads the team with 15 goals on the year, sat out the game due to a bothered Achilles tendon.

"The weather conditions were just awful," head field hockey coach Char Morett said. "Just a tough game because of the rain the entire game and how cold it was."

The Quakers (5-10, 1-4 Ivy League) were able to stop the Nittany Lions from scoring the entire first half. After halftime, however, the Lions were able to regroup with junior forward Timarie Legel scoring off a broken penalty corner 10 minutes into the second half. Eight minutes later sophomore back-up forward Karin Grap took a loose ball in the crease and scored her seventh goal of the season to put the game away.

"The second half we definitely stepped it up and made the adjustments that we needed to make," back Kate Bender said.

According to Bender, the hardest thing to adjust to with the weather conditions was gripping the stick. Wet gloves lead to cold hands and cold hands lead to difficulty in gripping.

To make the adjustments with Conroy out of the lineup, Bender was moved over to the center back/midfield position and Becah Hostetler stared at right back. The first half was difficult for the Lions to get used to having Conroy on the bench. Conroy provides a strong presence in the center of the field, with both her stick handling abilities and her leadership.

"It was difficult having people moving around," senior back Kelly Concini said. "It took us that first half to get used to it. The second half we were much more comfortable moving the ball around the backfield and moving it up the middle."

Morett gives the Lions a lot of credit for being able to hang in there despite the tough conditions. Their ability to keep possession, especially during the second half, and keep up their strong stick skills was the key to the game. Penn's inability to generate offense in the circle was also a factor, allowing goalie Annie Zinkavich to notch her seventh shutout of the season.

"We just did a really good job of maintaing possesion of the ball," Morett said.