SEASON RECAP: Men's Soccer

One upset does not a season make.

When the Harvard men’s soccer team beat Brown 1-0 on Oct. 17, it seemed the Crimson was poised to make a mark in the Ivy League.

Outside of that high point, though, the season ended up looking much like the 2003 campaign. Last year it was Columbia, this time it was Dartmouth, but both results were the same: the Crimson could not muster enough down the stretch to take the Ivy championship.

Harvard’s 2004 campaign began with an extended southern road trip, where a pair of 3-1 losses to Rhode Island and Coastal Carolina left Harvard scrambling to come together on defense, but in the final game, the Crimson edged Furman 1-0 on sophomore Charles Altchek’s header in the 33rd minute.

“We had great communication, and that’s key,” junior goaltender Ryan Johnson said after the game. “The defense really stepped up today.”

Harvard defeated both Hartford and Massachusetts in the UMass Classic, taking the title on the strength of goals by junior midfielder Anthony Tornaritis and sophomore forward Matt Hoff. The pair earned all-tournament nods, and Tornaritis was named the MVP.

Harvard could not maintain the offensive surge when it returned home, though, as Vermont downed the Crimson 1-0. Harvard managed two goals in the next three games and went 1-2 during the lull.

In the third game, Johnson notched six saves in goal, but the Crimson fell by a tight, 1-0 margin to Yale.

“I’m disappointed with the results, but very happy with the second half performance,” Harvard coach John Kerr said after the game. “I thought we looked like odds-on to win the game handily.”

A week later, Harvard won its first home game of the season, a 4-0 rout of Cornell. The entire Crimson offense came to life, with four different players netting goals.

The Crimson next faced Brown, the preseason favorite to win the Ivies. After 89 minutes of scoreless soccer, junior midfielder Nick Tornaritis gave Harvard an edge with 53 seconds remaining.

After the Crimson tightened its defense and Johnson made several saves in the last minute, Harvard walked off the field in Providence with a 1-0 win amongst cheers from the large number of fans who made the trip.

“[Johnson] just told us...that his toe got in the way of that last kick and [it] deflected off his toe, into his hand and out,” Kerr said after the game. “So that was huge.”

After an easy 5-2 win over Princeton, the Crimson found itself just out of the league lead with three contests remaining. Penn sat atop the standings, and Harvard could once again look forward to a possible season-ending game that would determine the winner of the conference crown.

But against the best defense in the Ivy league, the unpredictable Crimson offense once again failed to find the back of the net and dropped a slippery 1-0 decision to Dartmouth. Last-minute heroics had set Harvard in motion earlier, but on this day, the Big Green scored in the 89th minute to nab the victory.

Harvard only managed one goal in its last two games, staggering to the season’s end with a 1-1 tie against Columbia and a 1-0 loss to Penn and finishing at 9-7-1 overall and 3-3-1 in the Ivies.

Junior captain and defender Will Craig scored the lone goal in the final contest.

Next year, he will once again lead a team that will look to improve on last year’s Ivy finish.

—Staff writer Gabriel M. Velez can be reached at gmvelez@fas.harvard.edu.