Late Tally Lifts M. Lacrosse Over Bulldogs

After losing to Yale in each of their first three years, the seniors on the Harvard men’s lacrosse team were looking for redemption. With a blockbuster four-goal performance and a clutch assist on junior attackman Mike McBride’s game-winning goal with 2.7 seconds left, senior midfielder Jeff Gottschall finally led his classmates to an 11-10 win in their last shot to beat the Elis.

“I thought Jeff played the best game of his career,” senior goalie and tri-captain Jake McKenna said. “What a game to do it in too, in our final game against Yale. It was an absolutely unbelievable win, and it means so much to our senior class to finally get a win against those guys.”

McBride’s goal was the perfect culmination to the intense back-and-forth match between archrivals Harvard (6-5, 2-3 Ivy) and Yale (5-7, 1-5 Ivy) before 2,423 at Yale’s Soccer-Lacrosse Stadium in New Haven, Conn.

With the score tied at 10 in the final minutes, Yale was able to control the possession in Harvard’s defensive zone for much of the final minute, before senior midfielder Dan Wurwarg alertly picked up a groundball in the top left corner of the box and raced to midfield. At that point, Harvard coach Scott Anderson called a timeout to set up a last second play.

“It was basically an isolation play for Gottschall, who took it out at the top of the box and then just fired the ball in to McBride who had snuck up right next to the goal,” sophomore midfielder Tom Boylan said. “Mike just grabbed it and had the presence of mind to put it behind [Yale freshman goalie Jordan] Ellis for the win.”

At that point, the Harvard seniors knew that they had finally triumphed; it was the Crimson’s first victory over Yale since 1998.

“I just came down with the ball and fired it in there and Mike came up with a brilliant play,” Gottschall said. “It’s been a long time since this program has beaten Yale, and we really needed this one, and it was a great feeling to win it.”

The Crimson came out of the gates hot when freshman attackman Greg Cohen added to his team-leading point total by putting Harvard up 1-0 just 1:21 into the game. The game went back and forth in the first quarter, with Harvard and Yale both putting up four goals apiece, but in the second period the Harvard defense shut down the Eli attack while the offense found the back of the net, giving the Crimson a 7-4 halftime lead.

“I thought that the first half was really strong defensively,” McKenna said. “And our offense really came to play, especially the midfield line of Gottschall, [sophomore Jake] Samuelson and [sophomore Brian] Mahler.”

The success of the first half quickly dissipated, however, as Yale scored two goals in the first five minutes of the second half to draw within one goal of the Crimson. Boylan potted his fourth goal of the season to stop the bleeding with 3:01 left in the third period, but Yale captain Scott Kenworthy quickly responded with a goal to put the score at 8-7 Harvard at the close of the third period.

“In the second half, we really let them dominate the pace of the game,” Boylan said. “Whereas in the first half we were working the ball around well and making sure every shot we took was valuable, we got sloppy in the second half and let them take what they wanted.”

The sloppy play continued at the beginning of the fourth quarter, as Yale ran off three unanswered goals at the opening of the period, and with the Crimson down 10-8 with 10:43 to play, it looked as if Harvard might lose another heartbreaker to an Ivy rival, despite an early lead.

Yet off the ensuing faceoff, Gottschall corralled the ball and raced down the field to score 10 seconds later and bring Harvard back within one.

“What usually happens when we get down by two or more goals is we lose hope a little bit, get out of our game, and start being impatient with the ball,” Boylan said. “Gottschall’s goal there was huge, and I think it really gave us the spark we needed to get back into the game.”

With 5:26 remaining in the game, freshman Evan Calvert scored off of an assist from sophomore Steve Cohen to tie it up, and the stage was set for Gottschall and McBride’s dramatic finish. Yet their heroics might never have been realized if not for the stellar late play of the defense on the other end of the field.

“In all of our games this year, we’ve been very excited and we’ve played on a lot of adrenaline,” McKenna said. “But I think the reason we lost some of the earlier games in the season was an inability to channel that energy and maintain our focus even when we got down. Against Yale, the defense was able to control the game in the last 10 minutes, and our defensive players just remained vocal and refused to accept the possibility that we might lose the game.”

McKenna’s accomplishments were also not overlooked by his teammates.

“Jake was awesome,” Boylan said. “There was a stint in the second half where they were getting some shots past him, but as usual, he stepped up big when he had to.”

The dramatic finish was a nice reversal of fortune for the Harvard players, as earlier in the Ivy schedule they lost late-game heartbreakers to both Penn and Cornell, despite holding a fourth quarter lead against the Big Red and dominating play for much of the fourth quarter against the Quakers

—Staff writer Robert C. Boutwell can be reached at boutwel@fas.harvard.edu.