Brown Blows Out Struggling Women's Lacrosse

After trailing for the vast majority of the first half, the Harvard women’s lacrosse team came out strong in the second period, scoring three straight goals to claim a one-goal lead over Ivy-League rival Brown, 7-6 in Providence, RI.

It was the Crimson’s (2-7, 1-3 Ivy) first lead since the very beginning of the game when the team jumped out to a quick 1-0 advantage. The Bears (8-2, 2-2 Ivy) dominated the field for the rest of the period, scoring five out of the next six goals and going into halftime with a 6-4 lead.

After Harvard’s second-half run put the Crimson up, Brown quickly responded with four straight goals, and nine out of the next 11, bringing the final score to 15-9 and dropping Harvard to sixth place in the Ancient Eight.

“It was a tough game for us,” senior midfielder Danielle Tetreault said. “But so are all of the Ivy League games. Things just weren’t going our way.”

The Crimson came into Saturday’s contest having lost two straight games, but only by a total margin of five goals. The Bears, on the other hand, had won five out of their last six games, losing only to Ivy-leaders Dartmouth by one goal.

But Harvard came ready to play and was led by a combination of freshmen and senior scorers. The first goal of the game was scored by freshman attack Audrey Todd, her 16th of the season. After Brown responded with its three-goal run, Alexis Nicolia, another freshman attack, scored to bring the Bears’ advantage back down to one.

The score remained unchanged for ten more minutes, until Brown senior midfielder Lindsay Minges scored her second and third goals of the half, on her way to a four-goal game. The second of these came with 8:07 remaining in the half, and from there, it looked like the teams would go into the break with the score, 5-2.

But with just 28 seconds remaining, a sudden flurry of goals broke the slow pace that had characterized the game.

To start, Tetreault scored for the Crimson on a free position shot opportunity. Brown answered with a quick goal to extend its lead back to three goals with 00:12 left, but eight seconds later, Nicolia scored her second of the contest, bringing Harvard into the half only down by two.

“Ending the half like that really helped us get some momentum,” Tetreault said. “Lacrosse is really a game of momentum, and going into the half like that really helped us at the start of the second half.”

The Crimson started the second half with that momentum in hand, as Nicolia secured the third hat-trick of her career 1:27 into the period. Junior midfielder Kyleigh Keating then tied the score five minutes later, and within two minutes captain Micaela Cyr put Harvard in front, 7-6, with 22:13 left in the game. Cyr leads the Crimson in both goals and overall points, with 22 and 32, respectively.

From there, Brown reasserted itself, as Minges found the back of the net for the fourth time. Minges’s goal was followed by an onslaught from the Bears’ leading scorer, junior attack Bre Hudgins, who scored three straight times for a hat trick. Hudgins’ 28 goals rank third in the Ivy League.

Brown was awarded six free position shots to Harvard’s three, and capitalized on four of them, while the Crimson only succeeded once. The Bears also scooped up more ground balls, won more draws, and took far more shots than Harvard.

Harvard led Brown in saves, as junior goalkeeper Jenn Hatfield made eight saves in her second game of the season, despite not playing for the first seven minutes. Hatfield replaced senior Mel Cook, who started the game.

The Crimson had a difficult time securing ground balls against the Bears. Before the game, the Harvard squad averaged 15.4 ground balls per game, and had not picked up fewer than 13 in any contest, but in this one it only managed seven.

The Crimson has struggled stopping its opponents this year, especially in its losses. Opposing teams have netted an average of just under 13 goals per game against Harvard, while the Crimson only puts up 10. Harvard has lost every game in which the opposing team has scored at least ten goals, which has occurred in all of its losses thus far.

“We need to continue to work hard going forward,” Tetreault said. “We just have to keep working to improve the things that we have control over and that [will] help us succeed.”