Nine to one is a possible lacrosse score and a conceivable baseball score. 9-1 is a phenomenal scooer score. Saturday morning a phenomenal Crimson soccer team defeated Cornell on the Business School field, 9 to 1.
Chris O'Hiri did not score all nine goals to break the Ivy League season scoring record of eight. But the great sophomore center-forward did get five, leading Harvard to its first Ivy win this season.
O'Hiri scored with both feet, with lobe and smashes, from close in and from far out, from flat on his back and from the out of bounds line virtually parallel to the front of the goal. A left-footer in the fourth period sprained a game Cornell goalie's left wrist and forced him to retire from the field.
But coach Bruce Munro was right then he said before the game that "soccer people will know that this is not a one-man team." Besides the four goals which the rest of the team scored, Harvard dominated the game at all positions. The Crimson made the opposition look weak, but amaxingly enough Cornell was not playing the hapless socoer the score indicated until bad demoralization set in half way through the third period. Even then the Big Red was able to rouse itself enough to score its lone goal against Crimson substitutes in the fourth quarter.
It was just that after about three minutes of even play in the first period Harvard was unbeatable. It took the Crimson a while to break the ice, but as passes were consistently fired in front of the Cornell goal and as O'Hiri and right inside Seamus Malin shot ever closer to the target, the inevitable was clearly only a matter of time.
Malin got there first. The scrappy Crimson inside took a pass from his left and quickly punched his scoring kick past the goalie.
Shortly after O'Hiri took charge of the rest of the first-half scoring. Taking a pass behind the Cornell fullbacks from left halfback Tony Davies, he slipped to the ground-in the act of lobbing a perfect shot over the rushing goalie.
His next goal, midway through the second period, astonished the five or six hundred spectators which ringed the field, not to mention the handful watching the game from the top of Harvard Stadium.
Outrunning a defender to reach a long downfield pass by Davies, he gained control of the ball within ten yards of the goal, slightly to the left. Hesitating long enough to make the goalie commit himself, O'Hiri streaked past him on the left. On the point of going out of bounds to the left of the Cornell cage, he stopped the ball and twisted to punch a right footed kick high into the goal, less than a foot inside it.
Before the half had ended, O'Hiri had scored again, and Harvard led 4 to 6.
Cornell briefly came to life at the beginning of the second half, but only briefly. After Harvard goalie John Adams rebuffed a Cornell threat, O'Hiri received a long downfield pass and dropped a pass of his own in front of center halfback Billy Ward, who smashed a long, low kick between the Cornell fullbacks and past a bemused goalie.
This was the goal that broke Cornell's back. After it, the relentless pressure of the Harvard attack seemed to subside somewhat, but the Cornell supply of spirit was almost completely exhausted. O'Hiri scored twice more to bring the total to 7 to 0 at the end of the third period.
Cornell center-forward Ron Gerard scored the long Red tally at the beginning of the fourth quarter, and halfbacks Davies and Dave Clapp ended the afternoon with pretty but irrelevant goals
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