FARMVILLE, Va. – Two days ago, Longwood field hockey head coach Iain Byers lamented lost opportunities in the circle as the reason for his team's 3-2 overtime loss at VCU.
 
"To be generating the attacks is good, but we have to be able to finish at a higher rate if we want to win," he said after the sudden-death loss.
 
Consider the lesson learned.
 
Longwood (4-3) stormed out to a 4-1 lead and held off a late Davidson rally to outlast the Wildcats 4-3 and extend the program's best start of the Division I era. The offensive duo of Edel Nyland and Leonie Verstraete combined for three goals, including back-to-back scores in the final 15 minutes, to push the Lancers back over .500 through seven games for the first time since Longwood went Division I in 2007.
 
"This was a big step for us, coming back from a disappointing loss," said senior Jordan Chapman, whose late second-half goal gave the Lancers the lead for good. "We let ourselves down Friday, and we just wanted to prove to ourselves that we can play at a higher level. We really just wanted to play simple, make the easy passes and connections."
 
Longwood did just that, dominating Davidson (1-3) on both ends of the field through more than 60 minutes en route to their third four-goal game of the year. The Lancers got two late-half goals, first from Chapman on a penalty corner in the final two minutes of the first half and again from Nyland with fewer than 10 minutes remaining in the second half.
 
Nyland's goal proved to be the game-winner after Davidson followed with a two-goal run in the game's final six minutes that cut Longwood's 4-1 lead to just one goal.
 
"Every year we have a battle with Davidson," said Byers, who has led Longwood to seven consecutive wins over their former NorPac Conference rivals. "We're both very competitive teams, and we play similar styles. We finished a bit better than we have in our previous games, so that's a step in the right direction."
 
Davidson had no answer for Longwood's goal-scoring tandem of Nyland and Verstraete, who torched the Wildcats for eight shots, punching in three of those to give them a combined 15 goals on the year.
 
Verstraete was responsible for Longwood's first and third goals, putting together her first career multi-goal game and continuing a sophomore breakout that has helped the Lancers emerge as the Mid-American Conference's top scoring team. Nyland, meanwhile, solidified her status as the NCAA's second-leading goal scorer with a 61st-minute game-winner that was her MAC-leading ninth of the year.
 
"We were better," Byers said. "We probably still had a few circle penetrations that we could have capitalized on better, but we asked them to improve and they improved. If we keep working on it, we'll keep getting better. The effort's there; it's just the application that needs to come now."
 
Longwood's backfield contingent of Ellen Ross and Lil-Sophie Achterwinter put in marathon efforts to hold Davidson to one goal through the first 64-plus minutes, that lone goal coming when Paige Albert reached her stick at an errant Longwood pass in the backfield and popped it over charging goalkeeper Lauren Benard's stick. That would be the lone blemish on their collective resume until the Wildcats got back-to-back goals from Becca Jones and Anne Federico in the 65th and 68th minutes, but the Lancer defense bounced back to keep Davidson out of the circle for the rest of the game.
 
With a 4-3 record in hand and just two games remaining before the start of MAC play, the Lancers will have the opportunity to improve to 5-3 this Saturday when they had to Boone, N.C., to face future MAC foe Appalachian State. That matchup against the Mountaineers, who will become the conference's eighth field hockey program next season, tips off at 5 p.m.

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