Ivy Field Hockey Unbeatens Clash

If the Harvard field hockey team needed any incentive to rebound after two narrow defeats to top 10 teams this past week, it needn’t look any farther than the pinnacle of the Ivy standings where the Crimson, Cornell and Princeton share the lead.

After Saturday’s noon meeting between No. 20 Harvard and Cornell at Jordan Field, the top of the Ivies will be less crowded, guaranteed.

The Big Red (7-3, 3-0 Ivy) figure to be Harvard’s toughest Ivy matchup to date. Cornell enters one game off from its school record six-game win streak that was snapped by Syracuse on Tuesday.

While the Big Red’s feat was impressive by its standards, all six victories came against sub-.500 teams.

Harvard (6-3, 3-0) itself has yet to beat a team with a current winning record, though its three defeats to Connecticut, No. 4 Wake Forest and No. 10 Northeastern all came down to the wire.

While those defeats only show up as losses in the standings, each one of those opponents is tougher than anyone Cornell has seen this season. Harvard hopes to gain an advantage in Ivy play by measuring up to its tougher nonconference opponents.

“[Cornell] is doing well, but I think we’re going to take our two [most recent] losses and really put everything together,” said senior forward Philomena Gambale, the team’s second-leading scorer. “I think we’re ready.”

The Big Red boasts the most heralded player on the turf this weekend in junior Carissa Mirasol, who earned Second Team All-American honors last season and presently leads the Ivy in assists with one per game.

Mirasol’s scoring prowess has yet to affect Harvard in her career, however, as the Crimson has posted shutout wins over the Big Red in the past two years—5-0 in 2000 and 1-0 in 2001.

Mirasol has only one goal this season, well down from a year ago. But classmate Lindsay Grace has emerged to lead the team in scoring with five goals and five assists.

Harvard’s leading scorer, junior Kate McDavitt, is the biggest question mark in this weekend’s game. McDavitt missed her first game of the season on Wednesday, and the hope is that she will be healed in time for Saturday.

McDavitt’s finishing touch was clearly missed on Wednesday as Harvard was limited to fewer than two goals for the first time all season, despite tallying 16 shots.

Harvard will have to draw more penalty corners in future games than it did against Northeastern. The Crimson had just six corners for the evening and failed to score a corner goal for the first time all season.

Cornell’s corner battery has not been the team’s strong point, but Harvard’s defensive corners haven’t been stellar either. While the Crimson has been exposed to the elite corner attacks of nonconference rivals, it should fare better against the Big Red.

A win over Cornell would keep Harvard in control of its destiny in the Ivy race and set up a battle of the league’s last two unbeatens between the Crimson and Princeton for the third year in a row. The Tigers (5-4, 3-0), coming off a Final Four appearance last year, have dominated Ivy opponents by a 22-2 margin in three games but haven’t distinguished themselves in nonconference play any more than the Crimson.

Last week’s loss to Northeastern was a serious blow to the team’s chances of making the NCAA tournament at-large. As the rankings stand right now, Harvard won’t get another chance to prove itself against a top-10 team. The Crimson’s surest bet to NCAAs remains winning the Ivies, and Harvard will have to top Cornell to realistically keep that hope alive.

“We’re playing well,” said Harvard coach Sue Caples. “We just need to learn how to win the big games.”

—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at remer@fas.harvard.edu.