Streaking Men's Soccer Seeks To Capitalize On Promise of Lehrer Era

With the Harvard men’s soccer team going for its seventh straight win this Saturday—not having lost since Sept. 13—perhaps it’s time for some perspective. Just two years removed from back-to-back winless Ivy League campaigns, we have entered the Pieter Lehrer era.

Expectations are now much higher in Lehrer’s second season as head coach, and the team has begun to deliver on the lofty aspirations that it has set for itself.

But two years ago, after the winless 2012 campaign, there was no talk of national titles. Harvard instead looked to instill a new culture around the program, taking its time to decide on a coach. Players were brought into meetings to interview prospective candidates as Harvard looked to rediscover the mid-2000s success of a program that rattled off four straight league titles earlier in the century.

Lehrer, once chosen, was not shy about his ambition.

“You look at the basketball program and the excitement and the success that they have had, [and] I think it can be very similar [for the soccer team],” Lehrer noted after he was hired.

Out of the gate, the outlook was not so rosy. The team dropped six of its first nine games, including a brutal last-minute defeat to Yale that former Kevin Harrington ’14 called the most “devastating loss I’ve ever been a part of.”

Fifteen games—and 11 wins—later, it’s safe to say the team had the will. Lehrer’s offensive system, which the team struggled to implement during last year, when it didn’t manage more than two goals in any single game, is clicking on all cylinders. Harvard scored three goals in five straight September wins; you have to go back to 2009 to just find the last time it was able to do so in consecutive contests.

That 2009 team, which won 14 straight games and started off its season with six straight wins, is the historical benchmark for this year’s squad. That team, like Lehrer’s second, opened its Ivy League season with an early 1-0 October win over Yale. That season ended with the team’s fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance and a place in the third round of the NCAA Tournament.

Those late-2000s teams are eerily reminiscent of the program Lehrer aspires to be—the Harvard men’s basketball program. That Crimson last year clinched its fourth straight Ivy League title before falling in—guess it—the NCAA Tournament third round.

Right now, the team has some work to do to live up to its peers in Lavietes Pavilion. With a chance to close out the Ivy League last year on its home field, the team battled but fell short, 2-0, against Penn. While Amaker’s squad enters the season seeking its fifth championship ring, Lehrer’s team looks for its first.

The team’s championship attitude bodes well for its ability to accomplish Lehrer’s goals.

This is a squad which openly admitted its ultimate goal is not a league title, but a national one, a squad whose coach noted before the season that “we feel we can compete with anyone nationally” and whose co-captain stated that “[there] is more of an expectation that we will be great.”

This is one-half of the odd duality that has kept the team successful under Lehrer: although the squad has never been short on confidence or quiet about its bigger goals, it never looks past the opponent in front of it. Lehrer is fond of noting that “our biggest game is our next game,” preaching that his players bring laser-sharp focus to every area of their lives.

Cornell, which fell from first in the league in 2012 to a paltry sixth last year, is only the next item in the buffet for a hungry Crimson squad. With co-captain Kyle Henderson back to head the midfield and junior co-captain Mark Ashby heading up animproving back line, the pieces are fallinginto place for a serious run at the league title.

Indeed, with six games separating the Crimson from its first title since 2009, there is no denying the cultural change in the program.

The change begins with Lehrer, who, like Amaker, took a program in disarray and set his team’s mind on the ultimate goal.

Now comes the harder part: following through on its mission.

Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com.