It was an important win for a team that had lost three out of four games following the season-opening triumph at UMass.
“Today, I think we played some of the prettiest lacrosse that we’ve played yet,” said Lavely. “We had some great transitions up the field, the offense had a great deal of possession, and the defense was doing a great job holding their attackers off and preventing them from having any good one-on-one looks.”
“It wasn’t just a one-person attack this time,” Lavely added, “and that made a huge difference. It was our whole team really looking to each other, really using each other, creating opportunities on passes. It was a very important game for us. We knew we needed to get this win, and it was great to finish it.”
“I think it’s going to be a great confidence builder,” Sproul said.
BROWN 10, HARVARD 9
A four-goal outburst by Brooks and a pair of late goals from leading scorer Owens couldn’t save the Harvard women’s lacrosse team in its Ivy opener against Brown.
In the end, Brown’s Sarah Passano proved to be too much, scoring three unanswered goals to finish the game and give the Bears (3-1, 1-0 Ivy) a 10-9 victory over the Crimson (2-3, 0-1) on Friday, March 26 at Jordan Field.
Passano had five goals and two assists, capping off the contest with an unassisted tally with just 4:41 to play to give her team the lead to stay.
Harvard’s frantic charge to tie the match came up just short, as Brown goalie Julia Southard stopped a free position shot by freshman attacker Liz Gamble with six seconds remaining to seal the game.
“It’s a very heated rivalry,” Lavely said. “We knew it would be a close game. Passano was one of the players that we wanted to keep our eye on, and she just happened to create a lot of good opportunities. They were doing a pretty good job getting her open, and she was just capitalizing on the opportunities that we let her have.”
The Crimson started the game on the right note thanks to Brooks, who scored the first goal of the game at 26:05 to put Harvard on top. Brooks added two more goals in the first half, then scored the first goal of the second half to give the Crimson a 5-4 advantage. She also added two assists later in the contest, one to sophomore midfielder Casey Orr, who finished the game with two goals.
“She does a lot to settle our attack down and to get us to work strategically,” said Sproul of Brooks. “She has a good calming presence on the field, because she’s very poised and very patient, and she has a lot of experience, since she’s been playing a significant amount since her freshman year.”
“I think that Jen has always been a really strong force on offense, and I think in the Brown game she finally had confidence to just go to the goal,” said Lavely about her co-captain. “She realized that we needed a leader on the offensive end, and she really stepped up in the game and did a great job. She created opportunities for herself and started the game on a positive note for us.”
The Bears answered Brooks’ fourth tally, however, by scoring three of the next four goals in the game to take a 7-6 lead. Then Harvard responded, starting when Brooks assisted freshman midfielder Margaret Yellott to knot the match at seven.
The tie lasted nearly nine minutes, and was finally broken when Owens, who had not scored or assisted any goals during the game, netted two scores in a 32-second span to give the Crimson a 9-7 lead with 8:28 to play.
“Casey Owens is a strong player in the sense that she’s not afraid to take it one-on-one,” Lavely said. “She’s a great ballhandler and just powers through the middle and really found some great open looks at the goal during the game.”
Harvard’s lead was ephemeral. Passano scored three goals in under three minutes to close out the scoring and give Brown the 10-9 win.
“We just did not play the type of lacrosse that we could,” Lavely said.
“As a result, even when we did get up, we couldn’t hold onto it because we were playing a little too frantic and weren’t finishing on our passes, and we weren’t really playing together as a team.”