Women, Men on Verge of Success

The Ivy League is a tough place to be.

For all of you that just scoffed at me, I’m not talking about the Ivy League that plays in Division I-AA football—a division in which a team beats one of the top squads in the country only once every blue moon, in which an Ancient Eight team hasn’t won the national championship since the first half of the 20th century.

And I’m not talking about the Ivy League of basketball, which is only slightly better, but still holds on to victories such as the only No. 16 to beat a No.1 in the NCAA tournament—the Harvard women besting Stanford over 10 years ago.

So what am I talking about?

A sport that is picking up speed and popularity across the country, a sport in which every year the Ancient Eight fields multiple nationally competitive teams—lacrosse.

As members of the ever-improving Ivies, this season has been a trying one for both the men’s and women’s lacrosse teams, whichin many ways have had parallel experiences.

Both teams had tough 2007 campaigns, with the women going 5-11 overall and 2-5 in the Ivies, facing the No. 11, 13, 15, 16, and 17 ranked teams in the nation in league play alone. The men went 5-7 overall and 3-3 in the Ancient Eight, facing No. 1, 5, and 20 along the way.

And then the athletic department decided it was done losing to its better, stronger opponents and began an overhaul process.

In women’s lacrosse, the department hired Lisa Miller, the fiery and strict 2007 Big East Coach of the Year who built the Syracuse program from scratch to a perennial juggernaut. For the men it hired John Tillman, a former member of a powerhouse Cornell program and an assistant coach for over a decade with Navy. Tillman helped the Midshipmen to five NCAA tournament appearances, just missing the national title in a 14-13 loss to Syracuse in 2004.

The teams were ready to compete. Miller made cuts and honed the team’s skills with increased practice time and a competitive attitude among the team itself; Tillman was a stickler for detail, making sure every inch of the game was taken care of and bringing along faceoff coach Anthony Kelly and defensive coach Kevin Warne, who have revolutionized the Crimson’s system.

As a beat writer I started the season reenergized, excited to see where the teams could go. With one game left on each squad’s schedule you might think I’d be highly disappointed and that both campaigns fell far from expectations.

Despite improving its record to 8-7 overall (and, pending later today, potentially 9-7), the women posted the same 2-5 mark in the Ivies. The men fared even worse, having only the opportunity to go 7-7 overall and 2-4 in the Ivies if the team wins this Saturday in a tough matchup with Dartmouth.

Yes, you might think these seasons were a bust, but let me tell you what those records don’t tell you.

After losing by scores of 15-3 to Penn and 19-5 to Princeton and barely beating bottom-dwellers such as Columbia and Brown by two and one goal, respectively last season, the women’s team has started to challenge the top teams in the country. Four weeks ago the squad lost just 14-10 to Penn, a team that this past weekend beat three-time reigning national champions Northwestern, 11-7. Harvard lost 18-9 to No. 2 Princeton after playing neck-and-neck for the entire first half.

As the rest of the Ivies continue to get better, the Crimson is gaining ground.

On the men’s side things are no different. One year after losing 15-6 to Cornell and 9-3 to Princeton, the men played just as well if not better than both the Big Red and the Tigers for all but five minutes of play in the respective games. The Crimson came literally inches from beating Princeton for the first time in 18 years.

The particularly exciting part for the men is that the team will lose none of its starters or top goal scorers to graduation, meaning the squad that was close to competing for the Ivy title will only be better next year.

So, as much as I hate the way teams use the term “rebuilding year” as an excuse, in some ways that is exactly what 2008 has been for both the men’s and women’s lacrosse teams. Having established a strong foundation and challenged some of the top teams in the country, the Crimson squads demonstrated that next year will be a prosperous one for two Ivy teams that are on the up and up.

—Staff writer Madeleine I. Shapiro can be reached at mshapiro@fas.harvard.edu.