W. Soccer Faces Tough Competition

Most of the Harvard women’s soccer team knows Virginia simply as the No. 8 team in the country.

But for senior midfielder Katie Westfall, the Cavaliers are more than just a number.

Westfall has a much more intimate knowledge of the team, having played on the same Olympic Development Program team as UVA defender Katie Bunch and forward Sarah Lane.

“Basically I’m pretty familiar with what they’re gonna come at us with,” Westfall said.

From what she knows, Westfall is confident that the Crimson (2-2) can compete with Virginia, although it is the highest-ranked opponent Harvard will face this year. But the Cavaliers aren’t the current priority.

First up is Auburn (5-1), a team junior forward and Alabama native Emily Colvin knows plenty about.

As Westfall is familiar with many from Cavaliers, Colvin is equally familiar with several players for the Tigers.

“They’re both top-20 [quality] teams,” sophomore Allison Kaveney said. “So for us to come out with two victories would be helpful, not just for the rankings but for team confidence.”

Auburn is unusual, Kaveney says, in that it plays the same 4-3-3 (four defenders, three center backs and three strikers) formation as Harvard does. Other teams shift to that style to counter the Crimson, but the Tigers are the only ones to use it as their primary system. Still, that doesn’t faze the Harvard players.

“We’re going to attack them,” Kaveney said. “We want to do a lot of one-on-one attacks. We know that they’re supposed to be really athletic girls, fast and aggressive.”

Despite the strong rankings and his players’ relationships with the weekend’s opponents, Harvard coach Tim Wheaton hasn’t circled any games on the schedule.

“We are trying to focus on—not to sound too trite—each game as it comes,” he said.

Practicing what he preaches, he’s said very little to the team about UVA, deciding to focus attention on Auburn, the immediate foe.

The games are the fifth and sixth this season against non-conference squads, a fact which is starting to get to the players.

“We’re so hungry to play Ivy [games],” Kaveney said. “UPenn is coming up and we’re very excited.”

But non-conference games are not without their purpose, serving to help the Crimson test their mettle for the league schedule that lies ahead.

“Ivy games are always crucial to any Harvard team,” Wheaton said.

So far, the Crimson has not fared well against ranked opponents, falling to No. 13 Penn State and No. 24 Stanford.

Some members of the team feel that they haven’t shown all that they are capable of.

“We just lost 2-1 to Stanford in a game we didn’t play 75 percent as well as we could,” Westfall said.

But if Harvard is going anywhere this season, the squad needs to prove it can win games against ranked opponents. So, as the women say, this weekend is a focal point.

Plus, the road to this year’s Ivy League Championship could go through New Jersey—specifically, No. 25 Princeton—so knowing how to beat a ranked team will come in handy later in the year.