Final Seconds Usher in Defeat

With thirty seconds left in its game against Holy Cross (4-11-2), the Harvard women’s soccer team was just running out the clock on a non-conference win. But just five seconds later, it was headed for its third overtime loss of the season.

Holy Cross’s Shelby Stand scored with twenty-seven seconds left in regulation to send the game into an extra session, then added the game-winner 2:43 into overtime to stun the Crimson (3-10-1, 2-3-0 Ivy) with a 2-1 loss in a cold, rainy affair yesterday at Ohiri Field.

“This wasn’t an Ivy game, but we need to compete with every team we step on the field with,” junior co-captain Megan Merritt said. “Our demeanor on the field was not good from the start.”

Despite an apparent lack of focus, Harvard still appeared the superior team for nearly the whole game. On the day, the Crimson posted 24 shots and held a 9-1 advantage in corner kicks, but Crusader goalkeeper Jessica Stone stood strong against Harvard’s offensive onslaught to record fourteen saves. In the opening frame, the Crimson controlled play and rarely allowed pressure into its own half. But after a seemingly endless number of near-misses and unlucky breaks, Harvard found itself in a scoreless match at the break.

“The focus wasn’t there today,” said head coach Erica Walsh. “We had plenty of chances to win the game, and we didn’t make it happen.”

In the second half, Walsh moved senior defender Laura Odorzcyk up to the forward line, hoping to create some energy around the net and turn her team’s shots into goals.

“She’s one of our faster, more athletic players, and she was really a threat for us,” Walsh said. “We needed some more punch on that front line.”

The tactic worked, as Odorzcyk’s speed and field vision on the right wing kept the ball in Holy’s Cross half. At the 55:06 mark in the second half, freshman Kelli Okuji collected the ball inside the eighteen and fired a shot. Stone appeared to have the save, but the ball deflected off of her and toward the feet of a waiting Okuji, who knocked it home easily for her first collegiate goal.

Earlier in the half, freshman goalkeeper Lauren Mann added to her season-long highlight reel of outstanding saves when she leapt to tip Alison Peters’s breakaway shot just over the crossbar. But Mann (six saves) was helpless on the two goals that did make Holy Cross’s side of the scoreboard, as Stand converted from point-blank range on both attempts.

Overtime games have not been kind to Harvard this season. Just last Friday, Brown’s Kathryn Moos converted a penalty kick in overtime to send Harvard back to Cambridge with a 2-1 loss. Starting with a crushing loss in double-overtime to then-fifteenth-ranked Penn State, the Crimson is winless in its five games that have run past ninety minutes.

“Losing a few tough overtime games against strong opponents didn’t necessarily instill a belief that we could win those games,” Walsh said. “You can’t tell a team that they can win, they have to believe it. I’m not sure that’s inside of us right now.”

Harvard has only three games remaining in its season, all against conference opponents, a stretch drive that begins Saturday night at Princeton.

“Hopefully we can finish the season strong and win our next three games,” Merritt said. “We need to put this behind us.”

—Staff writer Emily W. Cunningham can be reaching at ecunning@fas.harvard.edu.