On one of Hartford’s best scoring chances midway through the second half, Gunther stopped an initial shot from Hawk forward Jeanette Akerlund—Hartford’s leading scorer—but the ball continued rolling towards the net and freshman Alisha Moran, who had packed the net, cleared it from the goal line. But the Hawks came right back and Gunther was forced to challenge another player for a loose ball in front.
As happened on at least three occasions, Gunther won the ball and collided violently with the Hawk player. While Gunther emerged nearly unscathed, the Hawk player started rolling on the ground in pain.
“I got hit a few times, but then they would get hurt,” Gunther said. “I would get totally hit and they’d be squirming on the ground. I don’t know what happened.”
“I thought they were a little weak,” she added. “Every time they got hit they fell down for five minutes.”
Despite some trying moments, the Crimson defense persevered. Harvard’s second wave of forwards—consisting of Moran, freshman Emily Colvin and sophomore Alisa Sato—played a larger role than usual yesterday as they kept the ball in the Hawk end in the game’s final 15 minutes more regularly than the starters had.
The hustle of Colvin and Moran even managed to win Harvard a first-half corner kick, which caused a moment of confusion because junior Orly Ripmaster—the typical right-side setter—was out of the game.
With the forwards and midfielders keeping the ball in Hartford’s end for most of the final minutes, there was no final desperation run from the Hawks.
“We packed the box a little bit, and I was nervous,” Gunther said. “But once we got to seven minutes I was like, ‘we got this.’ The defense did awesome. I’m so proud.”
The victory was huge for Harvard on several levels. First, it was a win over a Hartford team that had been nationally-ranked for most of the season before falling to Boston University last week. The Hawks were fifth in the region entering the game while Harvard was tied for second in the region with Dartmouth.
Because the Big Green lost at home to regional No .1 Connecticut on Monday, the win solidifies the Crimson’s hold on the regional No. 2 spot—which should be enough to earn hosting privileges for the first two rounds of NCAAs.
The fact that Dartmouth beat Harvard head-to-head and might finish with a better Ivy record will be irrelevant in terms of rankings and NCAA seedings, provided that the Crimson can win its last two Ivy games against Penn and Columbia. At this point in the season, Harvard has maintained superior results over Dartmouth against a more difficult schedule.
But more importantly, the victory gets the Crimson back in the win column and ends any parallel to last season’s five-game losing streak that closed out the regular season.
“We sort of just had to get out of the kink we were having, and I’ll take it however we can. I’m not picky,” Gunther said. “It was a really tough game, and we did well defensively, but not that great offensively, but we got a goal and we won, and that’s all that matters.”