NFHCA National Players of the Week: Langendoen Does It Again, and a First-Year Keeper Steals Division II

Some players have a good week. Serena Langendoen had the kind of week that wins you two awards at once.

The Old Dominion junior, a defender from Rotterdam, scored five goals in a 3-0 week for the Monarchs and took the NFHCA’s Division I Offensive Player of the Week award to go with the Big East honour she had already picked up. Her hat-trick at Richmond included the late go-ahead goal and the overtime winner in a 4-3 road win, and she added two more against Queens. A defender. Five goals. Defenders aren’t supposed to do this, which is exactly why everyone noticed.

The keepers ran Division I’s other award

The DI defensive award went to Dartmouth senior Kylie McKinley, who made 19 saves in 135 minutes with a .950 save percentage and a 0.44 goals-against average. She held Yale to one goal through regulation and overtime while facing 15 penalty corners, then made 13 saves, including a penalty-stroke stop, in a 1-0 win at UMass Lowell. Dartmouth don’t win that second game without her. Simple as that.

Division II: a Dutch forward and a first-year keeper

Newberry’s Wibien Dahmen, a senior from Bavel in the Netherlands, took the DII offensive award with four goals and an assist in a 2-0 conference week: the winner in a 2-1 road win at Belmont Abbey, then a hat-trick and an assist in a 5-0 win over Wingate.

The DII defensive award is the week’s best story, though. Jenna Yazzetti is a first-year goalkeeper at Frostburg State, and her 11 saves in a 4-1 win at Millersville, holding them scoreless over the final 48 minutes, delivered Frostburg’s first PSAC win of the season. First years aren’t meant to look that calm.

Division III

RPI sophomore Lindsay Dunbar scored five goals in a 3-0 week, including the winner at Skidmore as RPI’s win streak reached 11, and took the DIII offensive award. Muhlenberg keeper Brenna Fitzpatrick took the defensive one with 33 saves across two conference road games, 21 of them in a 2-0 loss at Franklin & Marshall where the scoreline would have been far worse without her.

Honourable mentions worth a line: Penn State’s Ella Gaitan and Bucknell keeper Sarah Althouse in DI, Shippensburg’s Juana Caracotche Picone in DII, and MIT’s Ingrid Tomovski and Bowdoin’s Eva Filipponi, who shut out two ranked sides, in DIII.

The season is deep enough now that these awards are starting to track the same names. Langendoen, Gaitan, Althouse, McKinley: they’re showing up in the conference honours too. That’s usually how an All-America list starts to form.

Her conference award in full: the Big East weekly honours, plus the US college Wednesday round-up and the Saint Francis 10-0 rout.