Haitian Fans and Team Join Together

I’ve had the pleasure of attending some phenomenal sporting events this year. I saw Harvard hold on to beat Yale in The Game. I watched the men’s hockey team’s crazy victory over Boston University at the Beanpot, which helped spur a late-season resurrection. And I witnessed history when Harvard topped Princeton in basketball to earn a share of the Ivy League title.

These contests all had their share of drama, their share of those unbeatable, ecstatic, I-believe-that-we-just-won moments.

But in terms of importance to its fans and long-term repercussions, those three matchups don’t compare to the Harvard v. Haiti game I saw on Sunday.

Just ask Rose Charles, a native Haitian who works as the volunteer coordinator and teaches English at the Association of Haitian Women of Boston.

“My voice is not the same, and it’s been what, since Sunday?” a very hoarse Rose Charles told me yesterday. She giggled. “That shows you how much noise and how much screaming and laughing happened while I was there.”

It wasn’t only Charles who cared about this game. Boston’s Haitian community came out in tremendous numbers. Over 11,000 fans attended Sunday night’s contest, many of whom were Haitian. As of 2005, there were just 40,000 Haitians in the entire state of Massachusetts.

“Haitian people: we love soccer,” Charles muses.

But more than a love of “the beautiful game” drove so many fans to Harvard Stadium on Sunday night. At its core, the event was a fundraiser to benefit both the Haiti National Team and Partners in Health’s (PIH) relief efforts in Haiti. Specifically, PIH plans to put the funds towards the construction of a teaching hospital in Mirebalais.

This had special importance to Charles, who grew up in Mirebalais.

“I was thanking people for going to the game,” Charles recalls. “That’s my city that they’re building [a hospital in].”

And of course, it’s not every day that the U-23 national team plays in your backyard, especially when a 7.0 earthquake rocked the very roots of the nation just a year earlier.

In fact, at least 30 people involved with Haiti soccer perished in the earthquake, including players, referees, and coaches.  Due in large part to this devastation, the team has dropped 33 places in the FIFA rankings in just over three years.

In a sense, the fact that the contest even took place was a victory.

“It meant a lot to us that we’re still standing,” Charles says. “The theme [of the day] was ‘Ayiti leve’ [which means] we’re still standing [or] we’re still working.”

The game was more than just a game. It was a fundraiser and, above all, a celebration.

“I saw a lot of people I hadn’t seen in years, and I’m sure it was the same for a lot of people who went there,” Charles says. “I…saw the church pastor there with some members of the church. And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s awesome.’”

So when I walked into Harvard Stadium, I was greeted not by the usual ho-hum of Harvard students but rather by the pulsating singing and screaming and dancing and drum-banging of the Haitian fans.

Finally, after hours of tailgating and many more hours if not days of anticipation, the Haitian fans finally settled into their seats, and Harvard v. Haiti game began.

At some point, surrounded by Haitian fans, I began to feel myself cheering for the visitors. Heck, how could you not? This was a team that really shouldn’t have been there in the first place and very well could’ve ceased to exist after the earthquake. This was a nation whose GDP is less than half of Harvard’s endowment.

I’m not sure there is a bigger David.

At first, Haiti held the clear edge, thanks to superior ball-handling skills. But the team failed to find the back of the net. As the game went on, it became clear that neither side held the advantage. A stalemate reigned.

But despite the mediocre, rather unexciting soccer that developed, the enthusiasm of the more than 11,000 fans never waned. They cheered at every slick move by a Haitian player, jumped to their feet when a goal appeared in reach, and jeered when the referee gave out the yellow and red cards. These people were living and dying with this team, their team.

Eventually, the 90 minutes of regulation came to an unexciting 0-0 finish. The teams duked it out in penalty kicks, and Haiti finally pulled ahead, beating Harvard, 4-1. The fans, naturally, went berserk.

Even for those who didn’t witness the rather unexpected penalty kicks, regulation in itself was thrilling enough.

“It was crazy,” says Charles. “[A friend and I] also called our [friend] in Haiti…[and] both were screaming, telling him how much he missed for not being here.”

From here, the Haiti national team has big aspirations to say the least. According to the Boston Globe, the squad has one main goal: to qualify for the World Cup in 2014.

But at this point, the team has done more than enough.

Because like the nation, the team is still standing.

—Staff writer Robert S. Samuels can be reached at robertsamuels@college.harvard.edu.