Field Hockey Perseveres Over Yale

Field Hockey Perseveres Over Yale

By JESSICA T. LEE

Special to the Crimson

NEW HAVEN, Conn.—Coming off of an incredible win against UMass last Wednesday, the Harvard field hockey team may have expected a more comfortable game against Ivy-rival Yale. Instead, it got a fight to the end.

Amidst the drama of penalty corners, free hits galore, shots on both sides and even a couple of penalty strokes, Harvard (4-2, 2-0 Ivy) earned a 3-2 win over Yale (2-4, 0-2) on Saturday at Johnson Field.

With 3:34 left in the game, junior forward Philomena Gambale sent the ball into the circle, where sophomore forward Mina Pell gathered it and trickled a shot past Yale’s sophomore goalkeeper Krissy Nesberg for the game-winner.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” Pell said. “It went in pretty slowly, but a goal’s a goal.”

The goal was just what the Crimson needed at the end of an up-and-down game. Harvard’s sleepy play in the first half led to scoring opportunities gone awry and a 1-0 Yale lead at the half.

The Crimson was fortunate to be down by only a goal, given that Yale was awarded a penalty stroke with 10:10 left in the half after Harvard goalkeeper Katie Zacarian was called for a foul. Yale senior Erin Tennyson took the stroke to the bottom left corner of the cage, but Zacarian made the diving save.

Four minutes later, Yale scored the half’s lone goal. On an Eli free hit aimed straight on goal, Zacarian stopped the initial shot and cleared the ball to the right. Junior Suzanne Anthony put the rebound past Harvard’s defense into the left side of goal.

“Yale is a much improved team,” said Harvard Coach Sue Caples. “They have good athletes out there and they took it to us the first half. They beat us to the 50-50 balls. I felt that we were outworked in the first half.”

The second half was a new game, with the both teams playing with an intensity that left the referees blowing their whistles multiple times so they could be heard over the wind and the concentration of the players.

“I think we made some good adjustments in the second half in our positioning on the ball, what our forwards were trying to do,” Caples said. “I think that we dug down and we started to move a little bit. We weren’t waiting or hesitating, we weren’t conceding and we did all those things in the first half.”

Harvard started to move right from the whistle, and the Crimson was awarded its sixth penalty corner at 31:32 for its efforts. Gambale knotted the game with a high shot to the left side of the goal, one of the Crimson’s first successful corners of the year.

With the game tied, Harvard kept the pressure up, mounting an offense of penalty corners, long corners and free hits.

Just five minutes after its first goal, Harvard took its first lead off of another penalty corner, its ninth of the game. A Yale defender stopped the Crimson’s first shot, but senior forward Eliza Dick scooped up the rebound and sent the ball into the net for her second goal in as many games.

“Those two goals on corners fired us up and got us going,” Pell said. “That was definitely crucial for us.”

But Harvard’s lead was short-lived, as Yale tied the game again with 18:26 left. Senior Tovia Martirosian broke into the Crimson circle and took a long shot from the left side of the circle which seemed to slip by Harvard’s defense into goal.

Yale kept the pressure on Harvard’s defense by forcing free hits into the circle. But the Crimson’s fortune turned when freshman midfielder Shelley Maasdorp broke free of the Eli defenders towards the goal. Nesberg came out of goal and collided with Massdorp, sending her into a painful flip.

With Nesberg’s foul, Harvard was awarded the second penalty stroke of the day. Junior back Katie Scott sent a flick just wide of the top right corner of the goal, leaving the score tied with nine minutes left in the game.

But it was not to remain so. Seniors Sarah Luskin and Heather Hussey combined to bring the ball up into the Elis’ end. Their work in the midfield ultimately set up Pell’s game-winner.

Harvard had to fight out the final minutes of the game it its own end, with tensions high as Yale took a penalty corner with 26 seconds remaining. But the Crimson defense stood fast and held on for the win.

The Crimson had been struggling to utilize its penalty corners this year. Scoring two goals off of corners not only gave Harvard the lead but also revealed that the team is coming together in composure and command.

“There’s a new corner battery and it takes time, it takes precision,” Caples said. “Each piece of the corner is really important. We now have enough repetition where we’re practicing more with pressure. We’re creating good opportunities off of it and if we’re going to score off of a straight shot or a rebound on a corner, we’ll take it either way.”

In the past, the Elis have not posed too much of a threat for the Crimson, and with only four returning seniors this year, Yale rose to the occasion.

“This is a typical Ivy League battle,” Caples said. “It was a very different game than we had Wednesday, certainly, but it was a battle and that’s just what you see on Saturday, regardless of team records.”

The Crimson goes on the road this weekend to face No.6 Michigan State and No. 4 Michigan in what should be a telling pair of games in terms of how Harvard stands on a national level.