PISCATAWAY, N.J. – Rutgers field hockey finished off a huge home weekend with the team's second straight shutout victory. The Scarlet Knights took down No. 3 Ohio State for a 1-0 victory, doing so in front of the largest crowd of the season, with the program energized by a large group of alumni who joined the team on Homecoming Weekend for the pregame walkout. 

Sophie Kuiper scored the game's lone goal in the first quarter, and Sophia Howard made that stand up with four saves for the shutout. The Scarlet Knights earned their highest ranked victory of the season, and second top-10 win this year to improve to 6-7, 3-4 in Big Ten play. Ohio State took just their second loss of the season, falling to 12-2 and 3-2 in the Big Ten. Rutgers had a 13-8 margin in shots and 5-3 in corners.

This was a really important win for us," captain Paulina Niklaus said. "It was a great team fight the whole game. Everyone that played today played their best game. I'm really proud of the team that we found a way to win in the end."

The Scarlet Knights got on the board first with a great circle entry in the waning seconds of the opening quarter. Guillermina Causarano collected the ball off a restart and sent a pass to Kara Heck inside the circle. Heck played a great ball across the front, where Sophie Kuiper expertly handled the ball around the goalkeeper for the finish and the early 1-0 advantage.

In the second quarter, Sophia Howard helped hold that 1-0 lead, making a pair of successive saves off an OSU corner. That held the score at 1-0 into halftime.

RU amped up the pressure in the third quarter, with a 6-0 margin in shots in that frame, but still held just the one-goal lead.

With five minutes to play, Ohio State pulled their goalkeeper for an extra field player as they pressed for the equalizer. RU held them off still and preserved the victory.

"We came in with a mindset of resetting for this weekend and starting over," goalkeeper Sophia Howard said. "We knew these would be tough games and we had to defend, defend, defend. I'm really proud of our effort. We focused on our defending all week and we were working really hard and not giving up."

Postgame Notes

• Sophie Kuiper scored her second goal of the weekend after also tallying in Friday's game. She now has three goals this season.

• It was the second ranked win and second top-10 win of the season
• 15^th ranked win over the past five seasons and 39^th since 2018
• 15^th top-10 win since April of 2021
• It was only the fourth win in program history over a top-3 team and first since defeating No. 3 Northwestern in 2022.
• The team welcomed back over 25 alumni for its Letterwinners Weekend Celebration
• Rutgers won its seventh straight game against Ohio State
• The shutout came against an OSU offense that entered the weekend fifth in the nation with 3.67 goals per game. It was just the second time OSU had been shutout all season, and in fact only the second time OSU had been held under two goals.

Up Next

Rutgers remains at home for a one-game weekend next Friday, hosting No. 16 Penn State at 2 p.m. on October 25. That game will be Senior Day, with RU set to recognize seniors Guillermina Causarano, Lucy Bannatyne, Vicky Jure, Paulina Niklaus, Indy van Ek, Ava Cickavage, Bridy Molyneaux, Sophia Howard, and senior manager Amy Kim.