Women's Lacrosse Falls to Cornell

Looking to qualify for the Ivy League tournament for the third consecutive year, the Harvard women’s lacrosse team came out with a purpose on Saturday afternoon for its Senior Day matchup against No. 16/20 Cornell. But Cornell easily closed out the comfortable, 11-3 victory.

The Crimson fired six shots at the Big Red goal in the first eight minutes, while holding its opponents to just one.

Freshman midfielder Keeley MacAfee converted one of these six shots to put Harvard on the board first, slotting home after handling a well-placed far-post pass from fellow midfielder, sophomore Julia Glynn. With a 5-0 record when scoring first before Saturday, the Crimson hoped MacAfee’s goal boded well for the rest of the game.

Cornell had different ideas, however, and proceeded to score eight unanswered goals. The Big Red defense prevented Harvard from getting back on the scoreboard until the 12:43 mark of the second half, when the game was well in hand. The Crimson added another goal before the final whistle sounded, but it was all for naught.

Harvard (7-6, 3-3 Ivy) must now wait until its final game of the season for a chance to clinch a postseason berth. It will face off against Yale with control of its own destiny; a win puts the team in Ivy tournament while a loss would mean that the Bulldogs or Dartmouth would take its place.

The Big Red (11-3, 5-1), meanwhile, continued its strong campaign and kept pace atop the conference standings with Penn and Princeton. The win over the Crimson snapped a two-game losing streak, giving the team much-needed momentum heading into its final contest of the season against the Quakers.

Cornell will look to utilize the same possession-based attack that helped it overcome Harvard, as the Big Red’s patience and precision on offense was the difference in the game. Despite being outshot overall by the Crimson, Cornell fired 18 of its 19 shots on goal. Harvard, on the other hand, managed 23 in total but only 13 were on frame.

“The defense played a larger portion of the game today and naturally, they were getting tired,” Crimson senior midfielder Alexis Nicolia said. “Our offense was struggling to put our shots away which was unfortunate for the defense when they would make great stands.”

Harvard co-captain and goalie Kelly Weis made several impressive saves, but could not keep the Big Red from taking a 4-1 lead into halftime. Cornell junior attacker Catherine Ellis scored two of her team’s four goals during this period, and was part of a balanced attack that saw four players tally at least two on the afternoon.

At that point in the contest, however, the Crimson still boasted more shots and were also winning a majority of the draw controls.

“We didn't make any changes in our game plan [at halftime] because we were getting good looks on the first half,” junior midfielder Megan Hennessey said. “We just emphasized getting our shots on cage and putting some more pressure on from behind.”

The second half started much like the first ended, however, as the Big Red scored another four straight goals to put the contest out of reach. Junior attacker Jamie Dickson punctuated the run with two goals in the span of 39 seconds early in the half, taking the air out of Harvard’s comeback hopes. Dickson went on to finish with a game-high four goals.

Cornell also continued to collect the majority of ground balls in the second half, keeping the ball away from the Crimson offense. Big Red junior midfielder Kristy Gilbert picked up a total of four on the afternoon, while no player on Harvard had more than one.

“Going forward, we want to remain confident both on attack and defense,” Hennessey said. We’ll just work on the small things like ground balls.”

Nicolia finally scored the Crimson’s second at the 12:53 mark of the final frame, and co-captain and midfielder Audrey Todd collected the team’s final goal several minutes later. It was too little, too late for Harvard, however.

“We just had to start putting our shots away more today,” Nicolia said. “I thought everything else was going well and what we worked on this week we were doing.”

—Staff writer Geogre Hu can be reached at yianshenhu@college.harvard.edu.