With Tie Against Dartmouth, Women's Soccer Eliminated from Ivy Title Hunt

The Harvard women’s soccer team found itself in an unfamiliar situation on Saturday afternoon.

Playing in a position other than first place in the Ivy League for the first time all season, the Crimson (7-7-2, 4-1-1 Ivy) played a scrappy, physical Dartmouth (7-4-4, 0-3-3) team to a 1-1 double-overtime tie on senior day at Jordan Field.

With Princeton’s win over Cornell and Harvard’s tie, the Tigers clinched the Ivy League championship and the league’s NCAA Tournament bid.

“It’s a tough way to have our last game out here, but there were a lot of games before that,” senior Emily Mosbacher said. “I walk away with just the best memories in the world. This has been my Harvard experience, and I’m so grateful for it.”

With the contest tied for the game’s final 52 minutes, the Crimson put all of its efforts into attempting to score the go-ahead goal. Harvard controlled the possession for the majority of the second half and overtime, peppering Big Green junior goalkeeper Casey Cousineau with shot after shot.

In overtime, junior forward Joan Fleischman had a shot stopped by a sliding Dartmouth defender. No one could cash in on junior forward Rachel Garcia’s cross. Junior forward Midge Purce hit the crossbar. Garcia hit another one high. No luck.

“They dug down, especially the last part of the game and overtime,” Harvard coach Ray Leone said. “We were basically playing like we were down a goal almost the whole way because we knew we had to win. I’m proud of them. It wasn’t our best game, but they gave everything they had.”

Knowing that it needed to pick up at least one win and one tie in its next two contests and have Princeton lose or tie its next two, the Crimson entered the game with a sense of urgency. Harvard registered six first-half shots, but the Big Green defense ensured that the Crimson was held scoreless in the first half for the 11th time this season.

The real wake-up call did not come until the 56th minute when Dartmouth co-captain Lucielle Kozlov sent a cross through the Harvard defense that sophomore midfielder Lindsay Knutson knocked in to give the guests the lead.

“We all just got together and realized Dartmouth’s record isn’t great but they’re a great team, we had to take them seriously and we had to play our game and get it back,” Mosbacher said. “It wasn’t pretty, but we got one back.”

After cranking up the offensive pressure, the equalizer came when Purce’s free kick found Mosbacher’s head and eventually the back of the net. It was the second goal of the season for the senior and the 11th of her career.

“We worked really hard to get that goal back after going down,” Mosbacher said. “We just threw all our numbers forward at the end and going for it. We were willing to maybe lose if it meant winning because this was it for us, and we just had to go for it.”

While the Crimson pounded the Big Green zone with all of its midfielders and forwards, the outnumbered defense had to do its fair share of heavy lifting to keep the game tied. Junior goalkeeper Lizzie Durack made perhaps the save of the season when she got a fingertip on a Dartmouth shot attempt in the second overtime to knock the ball over the crossbar.

“[Lizzie and the defense] are amazing and that was an amazing save to not lose the game,” Leone said. “She was fantastic and the back line’s been like that all season.”

The defense has allowed only three goals in the team’s six Ivy League games, and Durack has made 16 saves in that span. Her six saves on Saturday were the most she has made in a conference game this season, but it was still not enough.

“We knew this was it for us,” Mosbacher said. “We had to win to even get a shot at the title, and we went for it. We went all out and it didn’t pan out.”

—Staff writer Stephen J. Gleason can be reached at sgleason@college.harvard.edu.