Field Hockey Can't Find Offense in Difficult Road Defeat

For the Harvard field hockey team, goals have proved increasingly hard to come by. Over its last four games, the Crimson (5-3) has found the back of the cage just twice while being shut out three times.

The second of those two tallies came yesterday in a bitter 2-1 overtime loss to unranked Providence (4-8).

Harvard actually entered the game undefeated against the Friars over the past nine years.

The Crimson couldn’t stretch the streak out to a decade.

“It was a very, very tough loss,” captain midfielder Jen McDavitt said. “It wasn’t so much that we expected to win, but we had two fantastic practices and really dominated the play of the game in the second half.”

Providence’s Abby Maguire opened the scoring 15:53 into the first frame, putting away a pass from Kati Lary.

“In the first half we were definitely on our heels,” McDavitt said. “Providence had just installed new turf and it took us some time to adjust to how the ball rolled.”

After intermission, down to a team it had been accustomed to dominating, Harvard responded at 40:51 as junior back Jennifer DeAngelis fired a low, hard shot off of a penalty corner past Providence goalie Stephanie Scavelli.

McDavitt and sophomore midfielder Jana Berglund assisted on the score, the first of DeAngelis’ career.

“Jen made a great hit coming off a penalty corner,” junior forward Julie Lane said. “We were able to execute the play just as we had done in practice so many times.”

The Crimson controlled most of the game and had several opportunities to score with a 7-4 advantage in penalty corners, but it just couldn’t find a way past Scavelli, who saved seven shots on the day.

“It was so tough because it all seemed to be happening in slow motion,” McDavitt said. “Our girls were so focused on just getting the ball out of our defensive zone that a few of our passes were just inches off.”

And unfortunately for Harvard, the duo of Lary and Maguire struck again.

This time, Lary finished a feed from Maguire for the game-winner with 6:55 left in overtime.

“[Maguire] made a fantastic pass into the zone and didn’t leave [us] much of a chance,” McDavitt said.

Despite allowing more than one goal for the first time in her collegiate career, freshman netminder Kelly Knoche turned in 5 saves on the night.

The Crimson offense has notably struggled over the past four games, but the team understands that it is up to them and only them to ramp up the scoring.

“It’s all about accountability,” McDavitt said. “We have talked about it as a team and we are definitely taking every rep in practice seriously because we need to find the right mix of players to create a successful offense.”

The task will not get any easier as Harvard welcomes No. 5 Duke to Jordan Field on Sunday at 1 p.m. In its last top-ten match-up, Harvard was edged by No. 2 Maryland 1-0 a little over a week ago.

“We can win any game,” McDavitt said, “even though Duke is very talented. I know we’re going to play our hearts out.”