AMHERST, Mass.--All good things must come to an end sooner or later.
Unfortunately for the Harvard women's soccer season, it as the team eliminated by the University of Massachusetts, 3-0, in the opening round of the NCAA tournament yesterday afternoon at Richard F. Garber Field in Amherst, Massachusetts.
The team came out shaky and yielded a pair of bad goals in the first 15 minutes of the match, and the Crimson would never recover. Harvard (9-4-3 overall, 5-0-2 Ivy) generated several good scoring chances in the closing moments of both halves, but Lady Luck wasn't wearing a Crimson-colored jersey in Western Massachusetts.
"I think a lot of the team came out very flat," sophomore Dana Tenser said. "We didn't seem to have what it took, and we didn't put it together."
The opening plays of the game were an omen of things to come, as the Minutewomen (16-5 overall) created a two-on-one break shortly over one minute into the game. Harvard freshman Jessica Henderson broke up the play, but the two-on-one exposed what would be the difference in the game.
UMass fielded a young team, like Harvard, but it has tremendous team speed at every position. The players raced up and down the field very quickly, and they outhustled the Crimson all over, especially early in the game.
And that led to the first goal just 3:18 in.
Harvard had trouble clearing a loose ball out of its own zone, and UMass halfback Heide Kocher got to the loose ball before any Harvard player cold. Kocher centered the orb from the endline to the right of the Harvard net to fullback Amy Powell, who was unmarked to the left of the net, and Powell drilled the ball just past freshman goalie Dana Krein.
"When you have a young team and you're playing against a young team, [getting an early goal] is a big factor," UMass Coach Joe Rudy said.
Harvard almost got the goal back on a gift when UMass goalie Danielle Dion (a freshman, like Krien) misjudged a clearing pass, and the ball bounced off the ground, over her head and off the crossbar. However, Dion's defense cleared out the rebound before any Harvard player could get to it.
While the Crimson continued to press for the equalizer, UMass countered with a play that sent Rachel Leduc on a breakaway. Leduc came up to the top of the 18-yard box and placed a solid shot into the lower left corner at the 14:54 mark to put her squad up by two.
"The first two goals, I thought, were a little soft on our part," Harvard Coach Tim Wheaton said. "But they're a fast team, and they're very talented."
The Crimson was also unlucky, as freshman Emily Stauffer delivered the team's second ball off the crossbar in the half. Her bullet from 25 yards out clanked off the metal 31 minutes into play.
Harvard would outshoot UMass by an 8-6 count in the first 45 minutes, but half of those shots were from long distances, while all six Minutewomen blasts came from within the 18-yard box.
"We started off really kind of shaky and nervous," senior Libby Eynon said. "We just got beaten to the ball early in the game. After a while people started realizing we could play with them."
But the game remained 2-0 into the break, and UMass came out fired again to start the second half, sealing the result with a goal just 6:27 in.
Midfielder Nicole Roberts beat one Harvard player and then Krein, who had charged out of the net. The rest was academic as she easily tapped the ball into the net.
"Harvard really picked it up the last 15 to 20 minutes of the first half," Rudy said. "At halftime, I told [my team] that two goals would not be enough. When we got the third goal, it looked like we had it."
It's hard to pinpoint one main reason why Harvard didn't play to its potential, but there were several factors that gave UMass the edge.
First, the Crimson was coming off an emotional 3-3 tie against Brown last Saturday, which left the squad one point short of the Ivy title. The pain of allowing two goals in the final 20 minutes was still in the back of many players' minds.
The team seemed to be a tad emotionally and physically drained, and that probably left the Harvard players one step behind the UMass players.
"We were working hard to get ourselves up for [UMass]--we did, and I'm proud of them," Wheaton said. But, "I think [the Brown game] was certainly a part of it."
Another difference was experience.
The Minutewomen have made the NCAAs the past three years and 11 of the past 12. They have reached the Final Four six times, including last year.
Harvard, on the other hand, hadn't made the tournament since 1984.
"There should be a difference [between playing a regular-season game and an NCAA game]," senior Sara Simmons said. "The field is the same size, the ball is the same size, everything's the same, but it's the big time. We were just nervous in the beginning."
One other factor was the tenacious Minutewomen defense. UMass keyed on stopping Stauffer and freshman Keren Gudeman, who scored two goals against Brown last week and who was the Crimson's second-leading scorer this season.
"We expected them to play, off Gudeman and play through their great central midfielder Emily Stauffer," Rudy said. "We wanted to defensively organize as quickly as possible, double up and make this game a little quicker than what they wanted to play."
Thus, Harvard won't face Hartford Saturday, but the 1994 campaign was a major success for a squad that most observer expected to finish, somewhere in the middle of the Ivy pack.
Yesterday's loss should be an experience through which the team will grow. A very strong nucleus of freshmen and sophomores remains, so the team has an extremely bright future.
"Definitely we have a lot of young talent, and definitely we'll have a good future," freshman Rebe Glass said. "In the long run, we have a lot to look forward to." First Half Mass-- Mass--Rachel LeDuc (Nidd Ahrenhotz) 14:54. Second Half Mass--Nicole Roberts (LeDuc) 51:27. Dion 6-2 8
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1989 HARVARD FOOTBALL
