WINCHESTER, Va. - The Shenandoah University field hockey team earned the second seed in the 2021 Old Dominion Athletic Conference Tournament and hosts No. 3 Lynchburg Thursday night in a semi-final round matchup. 

SU earned a first-round bye after defeating Lynchburg 4-1 this past Saturday on the Sprint Field at Shentel Stadium turf.

WHAT TO KNOW

• ODAC Semi-finals
• No. 2 Shenandoah vs. No. 3 Lynchburg 
• Thursday, Nov. 4th | 7 p.m. | Winchester, Va. | Sprint Field at Shentel Stadium

Lynchburg owns a 21-2 lifetime record over the Hornets from up north with 13 of those wins coming since SU joined the ODAC in 2012. Prior to Saturday's regular season finale, Shenandoah had not defeated Lynchburg since knocking them off in the 2016 ODAC semi-finals. Shenandoah would go on to claim the championship title after the upset. 

GET TO KNOW THE FIELD 

• Shenandoah made program history on Tuesday by cracking the NFHCA Top-20 national poll. SU is tied at 19th with 99 points. 
• Senior Kelsey Jones leads the program and ODAC in goals with 23 this season; her 1.44 goals per game is fourth-best in Division III. 
• Jones has rewritten the program's entire record book and now sits atop virtually every career offensive category. 
• First year Mairead Mckibbin is following in Jones and sophomore Farren Winter's footsteps with an incredible rookie campaign. She has found the back of the net 15 times and averaging one assist per game. 
• Mckibbin leads the team, ODAC, and DIII in assists and assists per game with 16. 
• Jones and Mckibbin both fall in the ODAC's top-5 for points with 54 and 46, respectively.
• Cassidy Morrison has put SU on the board 12 times this season with six assists, good for 30 points
• Shenandoah's offense is one of DIII's best, second in scoring average with 5.25 goals per game and thanks to a strong and experienced defense, has the third best scoring margin at 4.12 goals per game.
• Defensively, Hannah Mink, Kylee Tuebner, and Elise Velasquez have held down the back line all season helping graduate student Katie Garman to a league top-5 1.04 goals allowed per game and a .759 save percentage.  

SCOUTING LYNCHBURG

• Jackie Lerro powers Lynchburg's offense with 19 goals this season including a hat trick in the quarterfinal round victory Tuesday over Bridgewater. 
• Lerro has dished out 15 assists for a total of 53 points. 
• Emily Dudley has notched 27 points off 11 goals and 5 assists. 
• Emma Strouse rounds out the ODAC top-5 with 9 assists this season.
• Dudley, Lerro and Strouse are all graduate students and taking advantage of the NCAA covid-19 participation waiver granted to all student-athletes during the '20-'21 season. 
• Goalkeeper Kayla Brady has had an incredible sophomore campaign with 77 stops and seven shutouts. 
• Brady came up with many big saves on Saturday night's contest at Shenandoah.

MEET THE COACHES

• Shenandoah Head Coach Ashley Smeltzer-Kraft is in her nine season at the helm of the program and has led the 2021 Hornets to a 14-2 overall record, losing only to nationally ranked teams, Johns Hopkins and W&L, and a 7-1 conference record. 
• Smeltzer-Kraft's career record is 109-56.
• During the 2021 regular season, the program saw a record-setting win-streak of 12 wins before falling to No. 12 Washington & Lee on October 20. 
• Coach Smeltzer-Kraft earned her 100th career win at Stevenson on September 18. 
• Lynchburg's Enza Steele has been the face of LYN field hockey for four decades. 
• In her 42nd season she has accumulated a record of 617-238-11, second best among active DIII coaches, and was inducted into the NFHCA Hall of Fame in January of 2020.
• Under her leadership, Lynchburg has claimed 20 Old Dominion Athletic Conference titles and 12 ODAC Coach of the Year honors.