Undefeated Field Hockey Faces UConn in Prime Time

The Harvard field hockey team had better get used to the glare of bright lights.

No, the Crimson is not going Hollywood. The team will, however, be expecting greater attendance at its midweek games now that all seven of them will be played at night, beginning with Connecticut (1-5) at 7 p.m. this evening.

This marks a departure from the team’s recent scheduling practices. The Crimson (2-0, 1-0 Ivy) has played just three night games in the past two years—including none last season.

Harvard Coach Sue Caples cited several advantages to the change. The night games alleviate the challenges that the 3 p.m. Wednesday start times posed to the student-athletes, who would typically have to juggle classes with the games and training meals at noon.

As a result, the night games provide expectations of improved performance both in the classroom and on the field.

“They won’t be as stressed in trying to do everything at once,” Caples said.

The secondary beneficiaries are the spectators. Midweek afternoon games are extremely difficult for students and local parents to attend. The team draws as many as three hundred fans for a weekend game, but struggles to garner three dozen on a typical weekday afternoon. The midweek night games are likely to provide fewer conflicts for spectators, which means greater attendance and a more electric atmosphere for the players on the field.

The boost to the Crimson’s intangibles comes at an opportune time given that tonight’s opponent is arch-nemesis UConn, who Harvard has beaten just twice in 25 all-time meetings. When the two schools faced off three years ago, the Huskies were ranked No. 1 in the nation.

Despite the series history, Harvard is by no means an underdog in tonight’s game. UConn may be a program with a rich winning tradition, but the Huskies suffered their first losing season in school history last year and didn’t even qualify for their own conference tournament.

So far this year, the Huskies have lost five of six games, though they did most recently take defending national champion Michigan to overtime before faltering.

On paper, Harvard’s 4-1 loss at UConn last season was among its worst of the season in the eyes of the NCAA tournament selection committee, because the Huskies ended up with a losing record. The game was a sluggish affair, due largely to a one-week layoff caused by Sept. 11. Harvard outshot the Huskies, but a hot UConn goaltender tilted the game’s result the other way.

“We outplayed them, it’s just that everything they did went in the net,” Caples said.

Harvard had a chance to see UConn play at Jordan Field earlier this season, when New Hampshire topped the Huskies, 2-1. Harvard captain Katie Scott felt that UConn is more individually talented than its record might indicate, and she said the Huskies are capable of getting better results if they play better as a team.

The lack of teamwork shows in the statistics. Sophomore Lauren Henderson,—who like Harvard’s Shelley Maasdorp hails from Zimbabwe—has accounted for nearly all of the team’s scoring this season with five goals in six games. But outside of Henderson’s goals and two penalty strokes by senior Kelly Cochrane against Vermont, UConn has just one goal all season.

Harvard must continue UConn’s slump and emerge victorious in order to keep its national standing high. Games like tonight’s will be all-important in terms of NCAA selection should the Crimson fail to unseat eight-time defending Ivy champion Princeton for the league’s automatic berth.

“[UConn] is a team that we need to be able to beat,” Caples said. “It’s a really significant game. Quite frankly, it’d be a bad loss. They’re 1-5. We need to go out with our game and get a win.”

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