Men Booters Demolish Yale, 4-1

On a picture-perfect autumnal Sunday afternoon, the Harvard men's soccer team turned over a new leaf.

And suddenly, after a classy 4-1 thrashing of Yale (2-8-0, 0-3-0 Ivy), a team with a 3-7-0 record (3-1-0 Ivy) knows that the Ivy league title, incredibly, is its for the taking.

"We win the rest of our games, we win the Ivy League--it's that simple," two-goal hero Kevin Silva said after yesterday's game. "[Head] Coach [Stephen Locker] explained to us that really starting [yesterday], everything is part of a new season, where we can put our losing record behind us and take it from there."

It's true: what's past could be prologue to a Cinderella finish to a season that long ago looked to have gone sour. Thanks to a Saturday tie between league-leader Brown and Crimson-beater Columbia, Harvard knows that it can run the table against Princeton, Dartmouth and Brown and steal an NCAA tournament berth.

"Preparing for this game, the training environment has been much more competitive and intense, and I think it showed in the way we played," Locker said. "We were also able to play everyone, including all three goalkeepers, and it's great when you can win and have everyone contribute."

Nitpickers might point to Harvard's sloppy midfield play in the first half--but otherwise, there wasn't much to criticize about the Crimson's performance.

Senior captain Pepper Brill's defense was calm and rock-solid at the back. The offense looked past its usual fetish for scoring from the set-piece to pick up two pretty goals in the flow of play.

And Silva got untracked to have one of the best games of his collegiate career. The sophomore forward from West Chester, Pa., picked up only his second and third goals of the year, the latter coming after one of the nicest Harvard build-ups of the year.

"Kevin Silva was the man today," Brill said. "He kinda broke the ice for us, and I guess when it rains, it pours for him."

"I've been in kind of a slump for the last couple of games and couldn't put the ball in the net," Silva said. "Coach told me today to come out and not think about scoring, just to play 90 minutes of solid offense and defense and let the goals come."

Come they did, thanks in part to the Crimson's assist leader, junior Chris Wojcik. Wojcik himself got the first goal of the game--his first of the year--off an indirect kick sequence that began inside the penalty box, but after half-time it was Silva's turn to shine.

It actually took a shoving match between Silva and Yale's Lee Passavia to spark the Harvard offense and the crowd into action; Passavia was cautioned, and the Crimson took full advantage.

"I think we needed that edge; sometimes things like that bring the team together and get us psyched up, and we were a little angry after that incident," Silva said.

But shades of Diego Maradona in the 1986 World Cup: Silva didn't get mad. He got even.

His first goal (and Harvard's second) came in a goalmouth scramble following a Will Kohler corner kick, a perfect culmination to five minutes of attacking pressure that looked to have ended when Wojcik clanged his 20-yard shot into the post and was safely steered wide by the Yale defense for the corner.

Less than eight minutes later, it was 3-0. Junior Taadeh Sheriff's overlapping run found space along the right wing; he gave it in turn to Wojcik, who crossed deftly to Silva for an easy tap-in past Yale keeper Adam Sullins in the 74th minute.

"The prettiest thing about it was the way we started way back in our own end and we took it all the way up and scored," Silva said. "It felt so good--four goals for us, that's pretty solid."

A mixup on a back-header attempt from Sheriff to freshman keeper Ben Weeden led to Yale's only goal, but Sheriff atoned for his mistake within a minute. He sprung freshman Ricky Le past the Bulldog offside trap for a point-blank finish and his second goal of the year.

"We still had a few lack-of-experience-type mistakes out there, giving balls away when we shouldn't, but overall it was a good team effort, and that's exactly what we wanted," Locker said. Harvard  4 Yale  1