With the loss of seven seniors and former coach Jim Floerchinger, it was obviously going to be a season of change for the Harvard men’s water polo team.

This turnaround was made even more drastic with the loss of senior Todd Schulte and sophomore goaltender Robbie Burmeister, both of whom were expected to contribute a great deal this year, and hindered the Crimson (4-14) from doing anything better than a fifth-place finish at the Northern Championships.

But what makes the 2003 season even more disappointing is the freak way that Burmesister and Schulte incurred their injuries. Burmeister suffered a stress fracture in his right leg while playing against Iona on Sept. 21 because he was forced to stand on the bottom of an abnormally shallow pool, rather than treading water in a 10-foot-deep pool like at most colleges. But Schulte incurred his injury in a more abnormal way, breaking his ankle while trying to negotiate a staircase.

“Not very glamorous I’m afraid to say,” coach Scott Russell said of Schulte’s injury. “I wish I could say he was out playing ultimate frisbee or something like that, but no. He was just walking around.”

While Burmeister was replaced temporarily by Reid Bolton, the loss of Schulte was particularly damning, and prevented the Crimson from going far in its season. In the Northerns, the team lost once again to MIT in heartbreaking fashion. It went down to the Engineers 10-9 in overtime, its second overtime loss against the Engineers and the third loss to them of the season.

The other overtime loss came in the third extra period on Oct. 17.

“We’ve always had a pretty close rivalry with MIT,” senior David Stahl said. “They’re also kind of a cross-town rival for us.”

Following the loss to MIT that weekend, Harvard beat both Fordham, 11-5, and Brown, 8-7. Beating the Bears provided some revenge for the Crimson, who had been whalloped 13-2 by Brown back on Sept. 25. It also injected some life into a team that had struggled all year, and had only managed to win two games prior to that weekend.

The previous victories had come at the expense of the Rams, 11-6, on Sept. 20, and Connecticut College, 9-6, on Oct. 19.

Still, the early tournament loss to the Engineers prevented Harvard from qualifying for the Eastern Championships, and therefore precluded a shot at the NCAAs.

“Mixed feelings about the Northern Championships,” Russell said. “But rebounding from that loss and beating Brown...was a very rewarding win.”

The late-year victories could also be attributed to the team’s renewed strength. Russell is admittedly a coach who focuses more on conditioning than his predecessor did, and some of the Crimson players complained early in the season that they were running on fumes.

“For me, something that’s going to be one of the biggest differences is having the boys on the team pay attention to their fitness over the entire summer, rather than coming in in late August and expecting to get in shape in a week or two,” Russell said.

—Staff writer Evan R. Johnson can be reached at erjohns@fas.harvard.edu.