Put Me In, Coach

From the makers of the 9-0 shellacking of Fairfield, we give you the Harvard-Central Connecticut State women's soccer game.

Hey, two regional rivals locking horns at Ohiri Field yesterday. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Slight problem, however--the Blue Devils are in their first year as a varsity program, while the Crimson was 8-1-1 going in, having defeated and in most cases destroyed its regional rivals.

So gimme a break--this baby was over before it started.

Harvard 7, CCSU 0.

If Harvard coach Tim Wheaton hadn't sat his starters for extended periods of time in both halves, Harvard probably would have hit double digits for the first time since 1991.

So how did the scoring go anyway?

Breakaway by Naomi Miller--goal. Emily Stauffer on a perfect shot inside the box--goal two.

Breakaway by Devon Bingham--save (well, not everything went Harvard's way). Then again, Bingham only happened to score later and assist on four others, tying the Harvard single-game record for assists.

Well, back to the action. Break-away by Keren Gudeman--goal. Jessica Henderson shot from 30 yards out--nothing but net (the defensive back's first collegiate goal).

Folks, this was just the first 20 minutes of the game, and the Crimson already had twice as many goals as the number of shots that the Blue Devils would muster in the entire contest.

The field was not tilted in Harvard's favor. The experience and the talent were. The 30-40 fans knew that--in fact, the only people applauding after the gazillionth goal were the Harvard players themselves.

So what's the deal here? Is Harvard at least getting paid for the schooling sessions it's giving out to these nonentities?

(Uh, no.)

More importantly, is there something to be learned by Harvard about games like this? Certainly, a school like Yale won't roll out the red carpet for Harvard to score on.

"I think it keeps our confidence, but I don't think it raised it any," junior Dana Tenser said. "It just gave us a mid-week check on our playing ability."

"I think that the biggest difference is that we're scoring a lot more goals than we used to, but it's not that we're playing different teams," Wheaton said. "It's that we're playing better against those teams."

No argument here, coach. Your team has shown it can thrash an Ivy foe (6-2 over Penn on Saturday), come from behind to topple a tough non-League opponent (4-1 in over-time against Colgate on Sunday) and then stomp on a fledgling program.

The next step is to defeat a good Ivy League school, as in Yale this Saturday. Not only are the Bulldogs more skilled (they even defeated preseason favorite and bitter Harvard rival Brown) than anyone Harvard has played except maybe Cornell and Colgate, but the intensity level for that game is certainly much higher than what yesterday's match showed.

"I think we had a lot of hard games before this which were physically taxing," Henderson said. "This was a good confidence boost--the rest will come."

Warning--Harvard has to make the rest come.

The players must come out with more intensity than they did yesterday and certainly have to sustain it for 90 minutes.

"Basically, if we're not up for an Ivy League match that could determine the Ivy championship, a regional match that could determine who makes the NCAAs and Yale all combined into one game, and we cannot get up for that game, then we cannot get up for any game," Wheaton said.