On Saturday, the Florida Gators hosted the North Carolina Tar Heels for a high powered match-up between numbers four and two. Despite stellar performances from sophomore Mollie Stevens and red-shirt junior Nicole Graziano, the Gators lost by a final score of 11 to 17. To start the game, UNC scored two goals in the first eight minutes. For the first ten minutes of the game, Florida held their own on defense but missed opportunities on offense. Their first three offensive possessions were very brief; each ending in either a turnover or missed shot. It didn’t look good for the Gators until Freshman Shayna Pirreca scored her first collegiate goal off an assist from Parkland, Florida native Carli Marsh to put Florida on the scoreboard nearly ten minutes into the game. Pirreca played well all day and it looks like she will play a major role in this offense as the season progresses. After this, Mollie Stevens and Shannon Gilroy each scored in the next two minutes to make it 3-2 Florida. Unfortunately, this was the only lead Amanda O’Leary’s squad had all day. That doesn’t mean the game wasn’t close; it was tied five separate times. Following two more Carolina goals, midfielder Nicole Graziano scored for the Gators to tie it at four. Graziano had a spectacular performance. After missing nearly all of last season due to injury, Graziano opened up 2015 with one of the best personal games of her career; she tallied two goals and two assists for four points, three groundballs, two caused turnovers, and six draw controls. With such a strong performance, the red-shirt junior showed opponents that they have more than just Shannon Gilroy and Nora Barry to worry about at midfield.

Florida’s best player of the half was between the pipes. Goalie Mary-Sean Wilcox kept the game close with 7 saves in the first thirty minutes. The half ended with UNC leading 4-7. The Tar Heel goals came from Alex Moore (3), Kelly Devlin, Marie McCool, Aly Messinger, and Sammy Jo Tracy. To start the second half, the Gators came out swinging. After a Carolina goal seventy seconds in, Florida stormed back with four straight goals (three straight from Mollie Stevens and then one from Gilroy) to tie the game at eight. A rambunctious home crowd was going crazy. Brittney Coppa of UNC then scored one of her four goals to take the lead away from the Gators, but then Shannon Gilroy answered back with a goal sixty-four seconds later to make it 9-9.

Over the next five minutes, the Tar Heels were able to silence the home crowd by scoring three unanswered goals to make it 9-12 with 18:17 remaining. North Carolina won the ensuing faceoff and began to slow the game down. After a long possession, UNC scored its fourth straight goal to lead 9-13. Finally, Shannon Gilroy ended the Tar Heel run and breathed life into Gator hopes for victory by scoring her fourth goal of the contest with 14:57 left. With ten minutes left, the score was 11-14 after UNC’s Molly Hendrick scored and then UF’s Nicole Graziano netted her second goal. Florida had opportunities to claw their way back into the game but the team could not capitalize on them. Mollie Stevens missed a free position shot that would have cut the lead to two with 9:35 left and then, after a big defensive stop with about eight minutes remaining, Gilroy turned the ball over in transition leading to another lengthy North Carolina possession and their fifteenth goal. Trailing by four with less than five minutes remaining, the Gators had no option but to play with an overly aggressive and all-out defensive style. As a result, the Tar Heels scored two more goals and Florida was called for two yellow-cards. The nail in the coffin came when, with two minutes remaining, what would have Graziano’s third goal was disallowed on a crease-violation call. The game ended with the Gators losing by six, 11-17.

Florida put up a very good fight against an extremely talented North Carolina team. Strong performances from players absent from last year’s team, in freshman Shayna Pirreca and red-shirt junior Nicole Graziano, on top of stellar games from returners, in Shannon Gilroy and Mollie Stevens, bode well for the 2015 Gator season. Last season, the Gators used a 12 goal loss against UNC in the opener to catapult them to the Elite Eight. This year, the Gators hope to once again use the lessons learned from a loss against UNC to propel themselves to a great season.