Maybe it would have been too perfect had the Harvard women's soccer team (3-1-2 overall, 1-0-1 Ivy) won both of its games this past weekend.
Maybe the ending would have been too storybook-like had co-captain Beth Morgan's shot eluded Fairfield goalie Christen Veach in the final seconds of regulation or had senior Sara Simmons converted her breakaway in the final minute of the second overtime.
Maybe the Crimson wouldn't have suffered a letdown following its 2-0 whitewashing of Cornell (4-2-2, 2-1-0) if yesterday's referee had studied the rulebook a little more closely.
"Cornell was a very big win for us," sophomore Dana Tenser said. "But you can't let down at any point in the schedule."
Nevertheless, Harvard has to be extremely happy with the way it performed this past weekend, as it tied Boston College for first place in the inaugural Harvard Invitational.
The Crimson dominated the Big Red after a shaky opening, in which Crimson freshman goaltender Dana Krein made several key saves, including a diving stop to her right seven minutes in.
"Sometimes you can get too excited," Harvard Coach Tim Wheaton said. "We settled down a little and started to keep possession."
Good forechecking by Harvard continually kept the ball in the Cornell zone midway through the first half, allowing the Crimson to generate many extra scoring chances.
Morgan capitalized on one of those opportunities, as she received a pass from freshman Emily Stauffer and blasted the ball from about 40 yards out into the upper right corner of the net at the 40-minute mark.
"This is a dream come true for me," said Morgan, whose "lambada" dance on the sidelines following the tally was, well, not as pretty as her shot. "I had wanted to go to Cornell for a while, and to score against them and beat them was a great feeling."
(The dance, by the way, earned her a free dinner from senior teammate Libby Eynon.)
Harvard continued to put on the pressure following the halftime break, and its efforts paid off again 15:49 into the second half.
Freshman Keren Gudeman sent a perfect lead pass to Stauffer, setting up a one-on-one with Cornell goalie Sue DeLong. DeLong dove one way, Stauffer drove the ball the other way, finding the lower left portion of the mesh to give the Crimson a huge 2-0 advantage.
While Harvard's offense was clicking, it was the defense that held the potent Cornell attack to five shots on goal for the entire game, though the Big Red pressed very hard for the final 30 minutes.
"Our communication improved as the game wore on," freshman defender Rebe Glass said.
The Crimson seemed as if it would ride its momentum into another win yesterday, when Gudeman and Stauffer converted a carbon copy of their play on Saturday, giving Harvard a 1-0 lead over Fairfield under five minutes in.
But controversy struck the Crimson 10 minutes later when the referee ruled that a Harvard defender had sent a deliberate pass back to Krein, who corraled the ball with her hands.
According to the rules, the attacking team gets a direct kick if the pass is intentional, but the Harvard defender had lofted the ball into the air backwards with her back facing her own goalie--an unlikely deliberate play.
The Lady Stags converted on the following play and added another goal off a corner before intermission.
"The first goal should never have happened," said co-captain Genevieve Chelius. "The ref made a very bad mistake."
Harvard regained its composure in the second half, outshooting Fairfield by a 16-0 margin, but Veach kept denying the Crimson the equalizer until freshman Kristen Bowes redirected a Stauffer pass into the net with 7:08 left. However, the Crimson just wasn't able to get that third goal despite a 25-0 shot advantage over the final 75 minutes of the match.
"We just couldn't get it done," Simmons said. "We're all a little tired from all the games, but the comeback was a real tribute to our strength and depth."
Despite the tie, the weekend was an overall success for a Harvard program that has struggled to get over the .500 mark the past couple years.
"We were really psyched up," Stauffer said. "We wanted to control our destiny in the Ivies and we can now do that."
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