Chelius, Colligan, Winters, morgan: A Room to Remember

It was the last Harvard women's lacrosse home game of the year, and the usual 100 or so fans descended on Ohiri Field to watch their team take on UMass.

But something would be different this day. Taped up to the bleachers for the adjacent men's field, there was a sheet--an unmistakable blot against the gray sky.

"Good luck seniors!" it read. "Super-sassy Sarah Winters! Megacool Megan Colligan! Groovin' Genevieve Chelius! You're the best!"

Did a friend put it up? A teammate? Maybe a roommate?

All of the above.

Meet the residents of Eliot I-52: Winters, Colligan, Chelius and senior Beth morgan--the latter being the perpetrator of the aforementioned deed. All play varsity sports. Up to this year, three played multiple varsity sports. All were elected captains last year.

morgan and Chelius are co-captains of the women's soccer team. Colligan and Winters were co-captain-elects of the field hockey team (although Winters decided not to play this year). And Chelius and Colligan are co-captains of the women's lacrosse team, with Winters providing extra senior support.

There are enough varsity letters in this room to bring you Sesame Street for a decade and enough memories to occupy Ken Burns for almost as long.

Before even the freshmen invade the yard dorms, the fall sports are practicing for the new season. And one of those sports in the women's soccer team.

For the Crimson, a bumper crop of recruits came into Cambridge, including the likes of freshmen Emily Stauffer, Keren Gudeman, Kristen Bowes and Dana Krein. The first three were 1-2-3 on the team in scoring, while Krein was Crimson's NO. 1 goaltender.

With all this young talent, the role that Megan and Chelius would need to play became clear. They had to form this bunch of people into a team bent on winning.

The two of them went about it in different ways. Chelius was more of the fiery, rev'-em-up type of leader, while Megan emphasized the team's spirit more.

"Genevieve was a lot more vocal than I'd ever be," Megan says. "That's never been my guiding thing. I'd be more inclined to put up sings in the locker room."

In other words, they complemented each other. When a player needed to be get tough, Chelius was there. If the team needed bonding, Megan could do that.

But as the season went on, they realized that both styles were necessary, and that they could both learn from each other. Megan became more fired up, and Chelius understood that it was important to keep up the team's spirit.

"They grew more like each other than separate," soccer coach Tim Wheaton said. "Beth became more that type of [hard worker], while Genevieve was more of an off-the-field type person."

It worked. The Crimson finished 9-3-3 overall in the regular season and went to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1984, improving from its 6-7 record of a year ago. Harvard was also undefeated in Ivy League play, coming in second place with a 5-0-2 league record.

The defining game of the year was the battle with Brown on November 5. A win would give Harvard the league title, while a loss or tie would make Brown the Ivy champ. The match would be a bitter disappointment for the Crimson, as the Bears came back from a 3-1 lead to tie, 3-3.

"We were so psyched," says Megan about the Brown game. "Everyone was really nervous--really an excited nervous--and so confident, but it just didn't happen."

Nevertheless, the season was a success, and Wheaton feels that Chelius and Megan played a large part in that.

"They were great for two reasons." Wheaton says. "Individually they were outstanding athletes and people--they led by example and were two to the hardest workers on the team. Secondly, they were off-the-field leaders, knowing what to say to get the team motivated."

Contrary to popular belief, a captain does not have an easy job.

"Being a captain is a big responsibility," Chelius says. "In high school, the responsibilities were limited to going out to midfield for the coin toss. But here, it's also talking to different players and resolving personal problems."

A captain is a sort of a player-coach, a person that participates in the sport and also serves as a go-between for his or her fellow players and the coaching staff.

To do this, the captain must be a model for the coach, and he or she has to understand and serve the unique needs of every teammate.

"You're always kind of on stage," senior soccer player Libby Eynon says. "You always have to be in a good mood."

As underclassmen, the foursome had a big taste of some successful captains. They met people like Ceci Clark '92, co-captain of the field hockey and lacrosse teams her junior and senior year. And they met Liz Berkerey '93, who co-captained the '93 lacrosse squad and tallied the tying goal in the team's 1990 NCAA Championship victory that completed Harvard's comeback from a 4-0 deficit against Maryland. (although the Crimson would eventually lose in overtime.)

These were the people that showed Chelius, Colligan, Megan and Winters what it meant to be a winner and a Champion.

"It adds some pressure," Colligan says. "I've known some powerful captains and want to achieve the monumental things they achieved."

The students are now the teachers, as the foursome has an entire new crop of underclassmen to lead and set an example for. And they know that someday the Class of 1998 will become the captains, trying live up to the standard set by their forbears.

"They've been great role models," says Gudeman, also of the lacrosse team. "I'll definitely remember them always."

In the fall, it was also time for field hockey. Usually that means it is time for Colligan and Winters to pick up the sticks.

But in 1994 only one of them would be wearing the white jerseys and only one would be the captain. Winters, in a surprising move, decided not to play.

"I wanted a little non-athletic time to myself," Winters says.

Of course, that didn't mean that Winters rode off into the sunset. She still came to games and cheered on the team, even though she wasn't part of the team.

"I would have been upset if she hadn't come around a lot," junior captain-elect Jessica Milhollin says. "but she was great. She was honored to be [chosen as] captain, and if she couldn't give 100 percent she knew that she shouldn't do it."

This left Colligan as the lone captain and senior on the team. The Crimson was coming off a 4-8-3 year and had lost many form the Class of 1994, not to mention Winters. Things would be tough.

"Sarah and I are the exact same way as [Megan and Chelius]," Colligan says. "Sarah is the more soft-type person, and I'm more tough--that's what we lost when she left."

Especially in the early going. In the first couple of games, Harvard's youth showed, as it lost second-half leads against UNH and Providence.

Slowly, however, the team began to gel, Over the last six games, the Crimson beat Yale, Brown and No. 8 Northeastern, while playing well in losses to Ivy champ Princeton, Ivy runner-up Dartmouth and B.C.

Harvard finished 6-9. But it is a team filled with freshmen and sophomores, and that youth means a promising future.

"Megan was the only senior on a young team," says sophomore Mary Eileen Duffy, also of the lacrosse team. "She was patient--a lot of our success came at the end of the season.

"It's a huge loss losing Megan, but we're definitely going to be really good next year."

Morgan's sign now hangs in their room.

"I thought that it would be funny to do," she says. "They're my roommates--it's not something I had many reasons to do."

Still, it's not something that one sees every day. Not many take the time to do such things, so the fact that Morgan felt the deed was self-explanatory speaks volumes about the relationship these four have.

"I think that one of the great things is that we've got along better this year than in any other year," Chelius says. "The qualities in Megan, Sarah and Beth are things I'd like to emulate."

Likewise, making the sign was what was important for Morgan at the time. Who besides she knows what it was like for Winters, Colligan and Chelius to do what they were doing?

"When I saw the sign, I had mixed feelings," Duffy says. "All of a sudden it hit me that they were leaving. It was really sad...I realized that this was their last game. We wanted to kill UMass for them---they deserve so much recognition."

Now, the only people that see it are the foursome and anyone that might venture to the top floor of Eliot I-entry. It hangs as a testament to athletic careers that are over and to friendships that will never end.

The suite's final sport is lacrosse.

Save squash and perhaps men's hockey, Harvard women's lacrosse is the school's most successful sport. Besides the NCAA Title, the Crimson had gone to seven consecutive six-team NCAA Tournaments going into the 1995 campaign.

The 1995 Harvard squad had to make up for six departing starters from the Class of 1994. This was not an easy task, and much of the burden was given to co-captains Colligan and Chelius, with Winters providing support.

"It was a particularly difficult year, since so there were so many players on the team without playing experience," coach Carole Kleinfelder says. "They did as much as they could do to bring the younger players along."

Things started off well enough, with a 12-2 win over B.C. and a 19-4 destruction of Penn. But then the Crimson lost to Princeton--for the third year in a row--and the tone of the season was set, with a couple wins always being sandwiched by losses.

It is difficult to say what the hardest loss was. The Yale defeat, a 10-9 score that featured a disallowed Colligan goal with a minute left, ranks up there, Or a 14-4 downing at Maryland, or the Dartmouth loss, or the end-of-the season Brown loss. The three seniors took control of the team, with Winters, Colligan and Chelius respectively going 1-2-3 on the team in scoring, but it was not enough.

Harvard was 8-5 and didn't make the tournament, which doesn't seem all that bad. But one must keep in mind that, historically speaking, some of these losses were exceedingly rare. Dartmouth hadn't won against Harvard since 1986, and the Bears had only beaten the Crimson twice in its history before this year.

"There's lots of expectations," Chelius says. "Almost every team we play has a tradition of losing to Harvard-they feel that beating Harvard would make their season."

The three seniors tried to use this tradition to its advantage, reminding the younger classes of Harvard's storied lacrosse history.

"They're winners, and they know what it means to win," Duffy says. "Before the Dartmouth game, they said, 'We are Harvard, they are Dartmouth, Harvard always beats Dartmouth, we will win."

But even that did not work. Dartmouth won, 14-8.

After the game, Chelius and Colligan could be seen sitting on the bench, drenched in sweat from playing in the balmy April afternoon.

The co-captains looked at each other.

At this point, they knew the hope of making the tournament was over. The loss earlier to Yale opened up the coffin, and Dartmouth was the nail.

Might they have been thinking of when they were freshmen lacrosse players, facing Maryland in the NCCA Title game? Harvard held a two-goal lead with five minutes to go, but the Terrapins would tie to send the game into overtime and then win it all.

They were so young then. Oh, we'll be back. So resilient, and so naive.

"When people are saying to you that it's horrible to lose in the finals," Colligan would later say, "you don't really understand what that means."

Colligan and all of her roommates would never make it back to the finals.

So was the loss to Dartmouth it? Will the women's lacrosse team finish .500 next year, and do even worse the year after that? Will there be players two or three years from now yearning for the days when Harvard could get to within six goals of Dartmouth?

Duffy doesn't think so.

"It was kind of a wake-up call," the sophomore would later say, "We're going to work harder--if anything it will fire us up more."

Colligan and Chelius, while sitting on the bench, knew that felling.

They worked. They tried. They were fired up. But after the loss they knew that even if you have your best possible day, it may not be enough.

Might they have been hoping that the younger generation will realize better than they did that it must carpe diem and that NCAA Tournaments are precious and rare? Might they also have been hoping that Gudeman, Duffy and all of next year's recruits will use this wisdom to their advantage and reclaim the Ivy League Title for the lacrosse, soccer and field hockey teams?

Perhaps. A senior can only dream.

The reporter is about to leave, and he asks for some closing thoughts.

"I'm sick of closing," Chelius declares. "Everything's ending."

But there is nothing to be done about that. Commencement is coming up, and room keys have to be returned. In a few short weeks, the foursome will be alumnae.

Now they are looking for jobs, apartments and the like. And they know very well that investment banking firms don't have field hockey teams.

All they will have left from their playing days are mementos--team jackets, balls and other objects that remind them of games gone by.

Of course, they still have themselves.

"The way things worked out, on and off the field," Morgan says, "I never would have guessed that things would have gone as well a year ago."