W. Soccer Escapes Princeton With Win

PRINCETON, N.J.--Situation: You're the Harvard women's soccer team, in second place in the lvies, and you're facing near-cellar dweller Princeton on a balmy Saturday afternoon down in western New Jersey.

Should be an easy win, right?

Problem: You're tied at 0-0 late in the second half, and the Tigers have just missed scoring the go-ahead goal.

Sounds like a Rolaids situation, doesn't it?

Nah, just another day in the office for freshman Keren Gudeman, whose goal with 1:41 left in regulation spelled RELIEF for the Crimson (7-2-2 overall, 4-0-1 Ivy) in a 1-0 win.

Gudeman's tally made up for many lost offensive chances by Harvard in a game that Princeton (4-7-0, 1-4-0) was able to stay in for a very long time and almost win despite the gap in overall talent.

"It was a relief," Gudeman said. "We definitely should have scored more goals--it wasn't going our way today."

The winning play started with 1:50 to go in the second half. Junior Susie DeLellis gained control of the ball at midfield and lofted a pass ahead to the Tiger 18-yard box, past all players but Tiger goalie Kristin Alyea.

Gudeman charged towards the ball, while Alyea came out of her net in an attempt to get to the ball first. However, Gudeman stuck her foot out and got the tip of her cleat on the ball a split second before Alyea could make contact with the ball, and the orb trickled through the box and wound up in the Princeton net.

"Princeton is a much improved team," Harvard Coach Tim Wheaton said. "They played a hard game, but we were finally able to break through at the end."

The Crimson did not play too sharply in the offensive zone most of the time. Harvard generated numerous scoring chances, especially in the second half, but it came up empty, often the result of poor shot selection.

The players either held onto the ball for too long and were forced into weak shots, or they took shots from the top of the outer box when they had semi-breakaways--those shots went right into Alyea's hands.

Another factor that worked twice against the Crimson was every goal-tender's best friend--the plastic/metallic components of the goal.

With 10 minutes to go in the first half, freshman Emily Stauffer--playing with a cast on her broken wrist--sent a pass to freshman Kristen Bowes, but the crossbar got in the way of a Harvard score.

And senior Libby Eynon doinked one off the left post after making a great rush downfield with 10 minutes left in the second half.

All of this made for a frustrating day for Harvard. That is, until Gudeman's score.

"I think a lot of times we go in with the expectation that we're going to win or we know we can win," Gudeman said. "But what happens is we just don't finish and when it comes down to the last 15 minutes, we kind of realize that we need to get in there and score."

While the offense had its troubles putting the ball into the net, the defense saw to it that Princeton's scoring chances were few and far between.

The Tiger's good opportunities were limited to one wide-angled shot in the first half that clanked off the cross-bar and one shot from point-blank range that Tiger Emily Senecal drilled to the right of an open net with six minutes left.

Besides those two chances, the Crimson defense followed through with its aggressive style, keeping the ball out of its penalty area and pushing the action upfield.

"We have a pretty strong defensive system to counterbalance any attack that [Princeton] might have," said freshman defender Jessica Henderson, who spearheaded the backfield Saturday. "We usually take care of things in the midfield."

Harvard will certainly take the win, and the sign of a good soccer team is when it gets the victory without playing to its potential. The Crimson was bogged down with careless mental errors; it had a half-dozen offsides and three illegal throw-ins, to go along with numerous bad shots.

But the only stat that matters is the final score, and the Crimson remained one point behind first-place Brown, who crushed Pennsylvania, 6-1, on Friday.

"We have been working hard in practice, and the goal was just a symbol," Henderson said. "We haven't had a lot of luck this season, but we deserved to win." >Harvard  1 Princeton  0