Booters Defeat A&M, Oregon To Finish Fifth at Nationals

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.--The Harvard women's soccer team ended its most successful season ever on a positive note yesterday as the Crimson defeated fourth-seeded University of Oregon in overtime, 4-3, to capture fifth place out of 12 teams in the first-ever AIAW collegiate women's soccer national tournament here this weekend.

To earn fifth-place honors, the third-seeded booters came from behind to upend Texas A&M, 4-2, Saturday, and edged Oregon yesterday after losing to the tournament's surprise team and eventual runner-up University of Central Florida (UCF), 2-0, in Friday's quarterfinals.

The fifth-place performance caps the Crimson's 17-2 season, which included the Ivy League and Eastern Regional championship crowns.

Tournament host and top seed University of North Carolina (UNC) garnered the national title and capped a perfect 23-0 season with a 1-0 shutout of 11th-seeded UCF in the championship final yesterday afternoon.

The only Harvard individual honor went to freshman midfielder Jenny Greeley, whom the coaches committee named to the all-national tournament team.

"It was unfortunate that we didn't play as well as we could in the first game [against UCF]," coach Bob Scalise added. "When we're on, we're one of the top three or four teams in the country."

"We suffered from the tournament jitters against Central Florida," Scalise, whose charges have now compiled a 68-13-2 record in five varsity years, said.

Indeed, if the Crimson had faced a lesser team in the opening round rather than having a bye, the squad might have found its rhythm before meeting the tournament's tougher teams and could have finished in the top four.

The tourney enabled Harvard to compete against teams from across the nation and to show that Eastern women's soccer is, on the whole, superior to that of any other region in the country. UConn and UMass, the Eastern conference's other representatives, placed third and seventh, respectively.

In the rapidly developing collegiate women's soccer circuit, it is not surprising that national champion UNC started six freshmen and had five others on its bench. UNC spent approximately $90,000 for 14 women's soccer scholarships, while Harvard and Oregon (where soccer is still a club sport) were the only tournament squads which do not award soccer scholarships.

Despite the different approachs to soccer of the competing schools, the Crimson once again displayed its ability to come back and execute in the clutch. "It was nice winning the last two games after some hard luck in the first match." Scalise added. "Remember that our girls were trying to peak for the third time this season [after overtime victories in both the Ivy League and Eastern Tournaments] while for teams like UNC [which was awarded its region's national tournament berth and thus played its first post-season tourney this weekend], this was the post-season peak."

Peak or no peak, the booters, after the disappointing loss to UCF, bounced back to crush tenth-seeded Texas A&M, 4-2, Saturday afternoon.

Not until the second stanza did the Crimson dominate, as midfielders Greeley, Alicia Carrillo, Laura Mayer and Inga Larson controlled the flow of the game. At 8:28, Greeley stole an A&M throw-in, rushed up left wing, and fed co-captain Cat Ferrante in the area. Ferrante quickly directed the ball to striker Kelly Landry, who rifled a ten-yd, drive into the upper right-hand corner of the goal for Harvard's first tally of the tourney.

Moments later, Landry headed a Deb Field corner kick toward the Aggie goal line, where A&M netminder Graylyn Boyd pounced on the ball. But Boyd failed to control the ball, and Crimson fullback Jean Piersiak, who stands in the crease to harass the goalie on corner kicks, slid into the sprawling Boyd to knock in the tying goal with 26:30 remaining in the contest.

The Texans and All-American Carol Smith pressured temporarily, but sweeper Field singlehandedly launched the Harvard counter-offensive with a booming half-the-length-of-the-field clearing pass. The speedy Ferrante then outran the Aggie fullbacks to the ball and, before colliding with Boyd, directed it into the net to give the Crimson a 3-2 lead.

In yesterday's contest against Oregon for fifth place. Harvard dominated throughout the first half in perhaps the squad's finest half of the season, but only managed to hold a 1-0 lead at intermission. Greeley set up the tally with a perfect crossing pass which Larson into the twines. Goals by Landry and Mayer upped the score to 3-1, but after two Duck tallies which sent the encounter into overtime, a Mayer-to-Landry combination proved decisive in the 4-3 Crimson victory.