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Crimson Get Blanked by Visiting Princeton

SHE'S THE MANN
Cynthia S. Tseng

Harvard got 10 shots on goal compared with Princeton’s three, but one was all the Tigers needed to get past senior Lauren Mann to capture victory on Saturday with a 1-0 final score.

The “hard-fought game,” as sports fans tend to visualize it, takes place in the rain, on a muddy field. It’s fierce and physical with star players getting knocked around and fans heckling the refs and opposing players. The two teams relentlessly attack each other’s goal, often to no avail, until the very last second. One play, quick and unexpected, decides the game.

The Harvard women’s soccer team’s (7-6-1, 4-1 Ivy) 1-0 loss to Princeton (6-6-3, 2-2-1 Ivy) on Saturday at Ohiri Field had all of these features. The deciding tally came from Tiger freshman Jen Hoy, who scored with less than five minutes to play.

“You definitely got your money’s worth coming to this one,” Crimson coach Ray Leone said.

Harvard came out charging early and seemed to dominate possession for much of the first half but was unable to capitalize. Junior Katherine Sheeleigh and sophomore Melanie Baskind were able to put pressure on the Tiger defense and goalie Alyssa Pont, but Princeton was able to thwart the Crimson’s offensive plans. The Tigers were able to clear the ball after Sheeleigh set up a scramble in front of the goal and were able to force wide shots by Baskind and senior Christina Hagner.

“I think in the first half, especially, we had a lot of chances to put it away,” Baskind said. “You’ve got to punish them in the moment, [or] it’ll definitely come back and get you.”

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Princeton, meanwhile, was struggling for much of the half to get its offense going and to get Hoy involved.

“We have six or seven freshmen on the field,” Princeton coach Julie Shackford said. “From game to game, we don’t often know which ones are going to step up...at the end of the day, [Hoy is] our most dangerous in terms of getting behind people, putting defenders on their heels, that kind of stuff.”

The Tigers seemed to find their fire towards the end of the first half, outshooting the Crimson, 4-1, in the last 10 minutes of the half. Princeton carried that intensity into the second half and dominated the ball just as Harvard had done for much of the first half.

The second half was decidedly rougher than the first. Trying to clear the ball out of the box, co-captain Lizzy Nichols took what looked to be an elbow to the nose and was escorted off the field with a towel to her face at 73:58.

But the senior plugged up her nose and went back in the game at 76:38. A minute later, Nichols got a shot off.

The next shot of the game came from Baskind, and it looked as if the Crimson was regaining its control of the game.

But the thing about soccer is that one play can change everything.

“It definitely had a feel that it was a one-goal game,” Leone said.

That play came from Hoy. The freshman beat Harvard defenders freshman Taryn Kurcz and sophomore Lindsey Kowal down the field and drilled the ball past senior goalie Lauren Mann to the lower right corner at 85:10.

“Jen’s got the speed to get behind people,” Shackford said. “[She] hasn’t finished a goal like that all season, so it couldn’t have come at a better time.”

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