Harvard Beats Yale, Stays Perfect in Ivies

With ten minutes left in yesterday’s Harvard-Yale women’s soccer game, the Bulldogs snuck a shot past senior goalkeeper Lauren Mann.

But, right before the ball crossed the goal line, Crimson junior defender Katie Kuzma made a crucial sliding stop. The play helped secure Harvard’s (7-5-1, 4-0 Ivy) exciting 3-2 victory over Yale (8-5, 3-1 Ivy). The win in New Haven also maintained the Crimson’s perfect league record.

“It’s one of the top ten games I’ve ever seen,” Harvard Coach Ray Leone said after the match.

That is not a small accomplishment considering Leone has coached at the collegiate level since 1986.

The players agreed with their coach’s excitement.

“It was a great game—a typical Harvard-Yale game,” senior co-captain Lizzy Nichols said.

The Crimson started the game strong, opening with a goal 29 minutes into the first half.

Junior co-captain Gina Wideroff scored for the second time this season off a long pass from Kuzma, who was able to bypass the Bulldogs’ back line with the ball. Harvard kept the Yale defense on its toes, recording four shots in the half—all on goal.

Going into the break, the Crimson felt good about its play.

“I think we had a really good first half,” Nichols said. “We got a goal early that let us feel good going into halftime with some confidence and the momentum.”

At the start of the second half, the Bulldogs came out with powerful play and established a lead barely ten minutes into the period.

“We looked stronger in the first half,” Leone said. “But [Yale] responded and dominated for a long time in the second half.”

Bulldogs’ forward Miyuki Hino scored off a header to tie the game, and her teammate Becky Brown put away a loose ball to give Yale a 2-1 edge with 38 minutes remaining.

But Harvard did not let its opponent get too far ahead.

“We bent, but we didn’t break,” Leone said.

Crimson sophomore Patricia Yao entered the game later in the second half and quickly made her mark with a tap-in goal off an assist by freshman Alexandra Conigliaro to make it an even match.

“[Yao] came off the bench and scored right away,” Nichols said. “It’s the definition of a superstar to come off the bench and contribute like that.”

Harvard reclaimed its lead just seven minutes later with sophomore Melanie Baskind’s goal off of a deflected pass by junior teammate Katherine Sheeleigh. This kind of composure was what made a road win possible.

“It was a bit of back-and-forth,” Nichols said of the latter part of the game. “But we were persistent and I’m really proud of the way our team responded.”

With a little over ten minutes left in regulation play, the Bulldogs set out to prove that no game is finished until the final whistle blows. Yale’s Kristin Forster managed to get a shot past Mann and it looked like the teams would be even again. But Kuzma, who is also a Crimson sports editor, slid into the net to stop the ball from crossing the plane into the goal.

“The difference was that stop on the line,” Leone said. “Otherwise it’s a 3-3 tie game and we’re going into overtime.”

Harvard kept its play strong and preserved its 3-2 lead to give the Bulldogs its first Ivy League loss in one of the best games of the season.

“Both teams played well, [and] all five goals were awesome,” Leone said. “Both of us tried to work our strengths, and it came down to us being able to put the ball in the back of the net one more time than them.”

The Crimson will defend its first place position and undefeated status in the Ivy League this Saturday against the Princeton Tigers at 11 a.m. at Ohiri Field.