Following the hiring of a new, young coach and the loss of a legend in the sport, the Harvard women’s lacrosse team’s 2004 season was supposed to be a fresh start for the squad.

Instead, this year ended up looking like a mirror image of 2003, as the Crimson once again finished seventh in the Ivy League and found itself falling to late-game rallies from its opponents.

Sarah Nelson ’94 took over as the team’s head coach this year after Carole Kleinfelder stepped down at the end of last season, leaving a program she headed for 20 years to become the winningest coach in college women’s lacrosse history. She had garnered an NCAA championship from the 1990 season.

“Carole coached Sarah when she was at Harvard, so a lot of their bigger philosophies about how you look at the game and...those sorts of thing were very similar,” junior attackman Catherine Sproul said. “But in terms of specifics, Sarah probably focused more on physical fitness, and I definitely thought we were more physically fit later in the game.”

This ability to outlast its opponents proved vital at the beginning of the year, as Harvard (6-9, 1-6 Ivy) began the year on the right foot with a momentous 9-8 comeback overtime win against UMass. But it soon found itself on the losing end of those come-from-behind games.

“I feel like this year was mostly a year to rebuild the team, a year to get used to a new coach and a year to start getting back on track,” Sproul said. “We obviously could have improved in terms of our record.”

“I was a little bit more disappointed than most,” freshman goalie Kathyrn Tylander said. “But understanding where we came from, I feel like we did do better.”

The first of these late-game losses came at the hands of Boston College, less than a week after the contest against the Minutemen. The Crimson held a 6-5 lead with under 20 minutes remaining in regulation, but gave up four quick goals to put itself in a 9-6 hole with 13:56 to go in the contest, and ended up losing 9-7.

“We were just very flat,” Nelson said after the game. “We came out flat and defensively, I don’t think we were seeing the ball very well.”

The penchant for losing games late proved particularly devastating for Harvard during the Ivy portion of the season. Against Brown on March 26, the Crimson held onto a 9-7 lead with eight minutes remaining, but allowed Sarah Passano to tally three quick goals as Harvard fell 10-9.

And against Penn on April 10, Harvard had a 9-6 advantage late in the second half before surrendering four goals—including three from Lindsey Cassidy—to lose the game 10-9.

Finally, against Cornell in its last game of the year on May 2, the Crimson tried to create a last-minute rally of its own when it trailed 10-6 with less than 10 minutes in regulation. But the final drive came up just short, and the Crimson ended up walking away from the season with another close loss, 10-9.

“I think we should have finished higher this year in the Ivies,” Sproul said. “But next year I’m hoping to place at least fourth in the Ivy League, which is...an achievable goal.”

Certainly with the emergence of some of the freshmen—including Tylander and Caroline Hines, who finished second in the Ivies with 21 assists—and the growing experience of Nelson, this benchmark could be reached in 2005.

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