Women's Lacrosse Unable to Upset Princeton

Harvard (2-9, 1-4 Ivy) traveled to take on the No. 13/16 Tigers (8-4, 5-0) at Princeton this Saturday. The match was a tight one, with the two teams heading into halftime with a tied score, 4-4. After alternating goals, the Tigers ultimately pulled away with a two-point victory, winning 11-9.

“I think we really played one of the best games we’ve played,” freshman midfielder Izzy Wager said. “I think we just got tagged for a couple goals that we could’ve stopped. There were a couple chances where a girl was wide open in the middle…and if a couple more of our shots had gone in, just two more and then we would’ve been tied and gone into overtime, but it was a really back-and-forth game.”

Princeton opened the scoring with a free-position shot in the fifth minute. The Crimson answered two minutes later when captain midfielder Micaela Cyr registered a free-position goal of her own, her first of three on the day.

The tie did not last long as the Tigers pulled ahead with two goals in the 13th and 14th minutes to take a 3-1 lead. The Harvard offense rebounded, netting three consecutive goals. The goals came from senior midfielders Nina Kucharczyk and Danielle Tetreault from free-position shots and from freshman attack Alexis Nicolia, fed from Cyr.

A free-position shot from Princeton’s Sam Ellis in the final two minutes of the first frame leveled the score heading into halftime, 4-4.

“We talked [at halftime] about how on offense just keep with the game plan that we’ve been executing well in the first half, which was be patient and wait for good opportunities on offense,” Wager said. “Defensively we got called for little things like three-seconds in the eight-meter, which is easily avoidable, so [we wanted to] just fix a couple little things on defense.”

The Tigers came strong out of the gates at the start of the second half, with two goals in the first seven minutes. Both points came from free-position shots taken by Princeton’s Mary-Kate Sivill, bringing the score to 6-4.

The Crimson offense rallied with two unassisted goals by junior midfielder Kyleigh Keating and freshman attack Audrey Todd.

Princeton was down a player when the Tigers’ Ellis capitalized off of another free-position shot. Princeton registered seven goals off of free-position opportunities by the end of the contest.

Sivill finished her hat trick to bring the Tigers two goals ahead of Harvard halfway through the final frame. After Princeton scored its fourth consecutive goal, Cyr drilled one in the back of the net unassisted to bring the score, 10-7.

Erin McMunn tallied the Tigers’ final goal of the match with five minutes remaining. Cyr netted her third goal off of an assist from Tetreault, who buried a goal a minute later to end the scoring for the day, bringing the final score to 11-9.

“One of the major strengths is just sticking together,” Wager said. “Even if we have injuries or things aren’t going well, I think we always operate for each other and that really motivates us.”

Tetreault’s final goal put her in 10th position for all-time career goals at Harvard with 107 under her belt. Cyr led the shooting with the game-high three goals and also tallied an assist. Senior goalie Mel Cook registered four saves.

“I definitely think it’s a big momentum gain for us because we had a tough game against Holy Cross where we just didn’t play our game and didn’t play well, and then we play against a good team like Princeton and are tied at the half and lose by two goals,” Wager said. “Just being able to see our team play like that…. It was just like oh, we can do this. This is our team, this is our game, so it was definitely a momentum gain.”

—Staff writer Kelley Guinn McArtor can be reached at kelleyguinnmcartor@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @CrimsonKGM.