Losing Makes Winning Better

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

I’m sure that my sister would disagree with me. She’d tell you she always knew she was part of something special, and she didn’t need a loss in the NYSAIS semifinals to remind her.

See, my younger sister Clare was part of a Rye Country Day School field hockey program that had never failed to make it to the finals of the state championship. Never. Sure, this was only the seventh year her high school had competed in it, but a six-year run that includes three state titles has to be considered pretty solid.

And I think it’s only now, in the closest thing her team has come to failure, that RCDS can really take a step back and appreciate what a run it’s been.

The same goes for some of Harvard’s teams that have fallen from their usual mark of excellence.

For example, both soccer teams.

Until this season, the men and women had gone to the NCAA tournament every year since 2006 and 2007, respectively. For every member of each team, a year without the postseason is uncharted territory.

But rather than look at the season gone by and wonder what went wrong, these moments offer an opportunity to look back at the teams and the successes they’ve had.

Over the past four years, the Crimson men’s soccer team has made winning look easy, conference rivals look weak, and MLS scouts look more closely. A team that has no athletic scholarships and rigorous academic requirements for admission, Harvard still managed to make it as far as the third round of the NCAA tournament last season.

Both soccer squads could learn from the 2010 Crimson women’s golf team. Last spring, heading into the Ivy League Championships, Harvard thought it didn’t know how to lose. Having gone undefeated in spring play, the team seemed to be on its way to a third-straight Ivy title. Instead, it was forced to settle for third.

But in their fall season, the Crimson golfers have already made strides to resuming their place at the top of the league. The team improved every weekend and finished the fall by taking second-place in its final tournament. As winter rolls in and golf courses close, the women’s team has already put itself in good position to compete for the Ivy title this spring.

Both soccer squads have the opportunity to make a similar rebound. Like the women’s golf team, both will have a strong group of core players returning. Where golf has captain Mia Kabasakalis, sophomore Katie Sylvan, and junior Christine Cho, the soccer teams have juniors Austin Harms and Melanie Baskind, sophomores Brian Rogers and Alexandra Conigliaro, and many others.

And all three teams have experienced success in the past, so they know what it takes to return to that level.

What, then, can we learn about the Harvard team that’s still in contention for the title, even if it faces an uphill battle?

We can learn to appreciate the Crimson football team’s decade of dominance, whether or not it extends past this season.

If Harvard wins its next two games, it will finish with at least a share of the Ivy title. If it loses both, it will post its worst conference record since 2006, when the Crimson lost to Princeton, Penn, and Yale.

But what some might forget is that last year was nearly a three-loss season for Harvard.

The Crimson trailed its opponents as it entered the second half of its two best-attended games, the night game against Brown and The Game. In the latter contest, the Bulldogs had the lead until the final seven minutes when a combination of the clutch play of then-junior quarterback Collier Winters and the bold play-calling of Yale coach Tom Williams changed the course of the game. What people remember about these games is how they turned out. But the truth is that these contests could have gone either way.

It went that “other way” for the men’s and women’s soccer teams this year, but that doesn’t mean either program has lost its touch.

Losses happen. They give us all the opportunity to reflect on how special, how remarkable, and sometimes how lucky the wins have been.

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.