Another week, another award - Dessoye named B1G Offensive Player of the Week

The field hockey season was three weeks old before a Maryland player won one of the three weekly awards conferred by the Big Ten. That week, Terrapins Sarah Sprink and Moira Putsch won the Defensive Player and Freshman of the Weeks awards respectively. After a week off, the Terps began gobbling up those awards and, this week, junior forward Anna Dessoye joined the parade capturing the Offensive Player of the Week award and making it the fourth consecutive week at least one Terp has won a B1G field hockey honor.

While Dessoye doesn't lead the very balanced Terps in goals or assists, she is second in assists with 11 and tied for third with seven goals. Her 25 points, nine of which came last week, do lead Maryland.

The junior from Mountain Top, PA picked up an assist on the first goal in Maryland's 4-3 win over conference rival Penn State. She then scored on a penalty stroke giving the Terps a 4-1 cushion that provided the ultimate winning margin.

However, it was against the over matched Penn Quakers that she exploded for a game of Katie O'Donnell like proportions. Dessoye scored the eighth goal in the Terrapins 9-0 rout. Like her goal in the Penn State game, it came on a penalty stroke. To that goal, she added four assists for a career high total of six points in the game.

It's worth noting that three of Dessoye's assists came on penalty corners a critical area of the game where Maryland has scored more than twice as many goals and is nearly twice as efficient as any of their Big Ten foes.

Dessoye became the fifth different Terrapin to win a weekly award. No other school has more than two individual winners.

Maryland returns to action Wednesday night when they travel to Princeton to face the perennial Ivy League power. The Terps' next home game comes Sunday, October 19th when they host the Rutgers Scarlet Knights in a Big Ten conference battle.