This season, the big game rolled around with no title up for grabs and no hope left for the Crimson.

The men's soccer team suffered the biggest fall. The team was picked number one in the nation in the pre-season polls and had nearly all its players back from last year's Final Four team.

By the third week of the season, Coach Mike Getman's face had taken on a look of disbelief. The team stumbled against UConn, then fell to Hartwick and Dartmouth as the season seemed to snowball. No Ivy title, no national ranking, no invitation back to the NCAA tourney.

The men's lacrosse team didn't last much longer in the national polls. Rated seventh in the nation on April 12, the team went on the skids, losing six straight games.

But the men's lacrosse field did not tell the story of the Spring of '89. Next door, the women's lacrosse team rolled through a perfect regular season, capturing the Ivy title and wreaking revenge on Temple--the team that had ended the Crimson's NCAA hopes the season before.

Harvard took a 13-0 record to West Chester, Pa., and the NCAA Final Four. The Crimson topped Princeton in the semifinals, but Penn State held steady for a 7-6 triumph in the championship. Still, the loss did not mar the Crimson's season. That day in West Chester, the team acted like it was a champion--as if nothing had changed since April, when it trounced Dartmouth to clinch the Ivy title.

The first--and lasting--image that confronted a spectator at Ohiri Field that Ivy-title-winning day in April was one of smiling faces.

But on the neighboring field, the men's lacrosse team practiced drill after drill, the shadow of its losing season blending into the twilight.