In the Harvard women’s soccer team’s 3-2 loss to Brown on Saturday, the 30th minute was the game. Bears freshman Jill Mansfield found senior midfielder Michaela Sewall’s head with a flip throw. Sewall flicked it on toward a group of waiting Brown attackers, resulting in a goal.

On the ensuing kickoff, the Crimson displayed its skill—in this instance, senior midfielder Katie Westfall and sophomore midfielder Maile Tavepholjalern each snaked through several Bears defenders with nifty dribbling linked by a deft pass—but couldn’t quite finish.

Repeat several times over the course of 90 minutes—especially in the first half—and that’s the game, folks.

Harvard knew before the match that Brown’s game plan would consist of Mansfield doing a flip—more of a handspring with the ball touching the ground instead of her hands, really—to generate torque with which to launch the ball toward the 5’9 Sewall. It just couldn’t stop it.

“Every team that played them kept telling us, ‘you know, we lost 2-0, but they scored both goals on flip throws,’” sophomore midfielder Sara Sedgwick said.

“[Harvard coach] Tim [Wheaton] had mentioned to us that she was their target on throw-ins and they had one girl that they used for flip throws,” co-captain back Katie Hodel said. “So we knew going into it that that was going to be one of their main weapons offensively and just didn’t get the job done.”

Sure enough, the Bears scored their first two goals by relying on exactly that pattern.

“We sort of overcompensated for [Sewall],” Sedgwick said. “They scored the first two goals basically because we had two people on her. She wasn’t going to be scoring. She was going to be flicking it.”

“It wasn’t her winning the flick that was scoring the goal,” agreed junior back Liza Barber. “It was us letting them get to the ball first that allowed the goals in.

“The first two goals, she flicked it and that’s great, but we should be there for that second ball and we weren’t.”

Toward the end of the second half, Barber and Sedgwick decided that the 5’8 Barber should try her hand at marking Sewall, and Barber quickly figured out how to neutralize the Brown star.

“If it was over my head and I was in front of her, then it’s over my head and she wins it, whereas when I was behind her, I could read the ball better and I could kind of use her,” Barber said. “I could climb up her a little bit to clear the ball out.”

Unfortunately for Harvard, that realization came after the damage had been done.

“What they did was looked to find her as a target and she looked just to flick it on and then they had other people crashing the box to get the rebound,” Hodel said. “We just did not do a good job of winning the second header, third header in the box.

“You don’t mark people in your own six-yard box and you just don’t deserve to win a game like that.”