Junior co-captain Kevin Vaughan, shown here in earlier action, helped lead the Crimson to its redemption victory over the Hoyas. The teams’ last three matchups have been decided by a one-goal margin.

In each of the past two seasons, the Georgetown Hoyas have defeated the Harvard men’s lacrosse team by one goal.

But yesterday, the tides finally turned, and it was the Crimson (2-1) that emerged victorious by a single point, pulling out a 16-15 victory over No. 20 Georgetown (2-2) on a chilly day at Soldiers Field Stadium.

“It was a really hard-fought game,” said Harvard coach Chris Wojcik ’96. “Both teams played their hearts out.”

The Hoyas started the scoring 1:55 into the contest, when junior midfielder Zack Angel cut across the middle and fired a shot over Crimson sophomore goalie Harry Krieger’s shoulder to put Georgetown ahead, 1-0. But Harvard would go on to dominate the rest of the quickly-paced period.

Junior Jeff Cohen responded 30 seconds later with a game-tying score. A half-minute after that, with a Crimson man-up opportunity winding down, co-captain Dean Gibbons and sophomore attackman Peter Schwartz passed the ball back-and-forth before Gibbons fired on net, beating Hoyas senior goalie Jack Davis to put Harvard ahead.

Just six seconds later, after Harvard won the ensuing faceoff, Gibbons took a pass from freshman Eric Slingerland and scored.

At 10:44, Georgetown attackman Rickey Mirabito came around the net from the right side and fired a groundball shot past Krieger to cut the lead to 3-2.

After taking a pass from junior co-captain Kevin Vaughan, Schwartz then picked up with his first goal of the contest from far out on the right side to put the Crimson up 4-2 with 8:24 remaining in the period. Three minutes later, sophomore Alex White took a cross-field pass from junior Terry White, and Alex White, cutting across the middle moving left, fired it past Davis on the run.

Hoya Stu Shannon was then able to take advantage of a Sam Steyer pushing penalty and beat Krieger for a man-up goal. With 3:24 left in the first period, after a long Harvard possession, Vaughan, moving towards the Hoyas’ net, hit Cohen right in front, and Cohen, diving low from the left, fired it in to put Harvard up 6-3.

The Crimson would tack on one more goal before the first period was up, when freshman midfielder Daniel Eipp came from behind the net to beat Davis with 1:30 to go.

“Both offenses played really well,” Wojcik said. “We had trouble at stretches stopping them, they had trouble at stretches stopping us.”

After the high-scoring opening quarter, both defenses came out much stronger in the second, with the first goal not coming until 11 minutes into the period. After Krieger made a big save on a shot attempt by Georgetown’s Travis Comeau, the goalie hit Schwartz, who went streaking down the sideline. Schwartz threw a cross-field pass to sophomore Jack Doyle, who put the ball past Davis after finding himself wide-open in front of the net.

But the Hoyas responded with four unanswered goals. Attackman Brian Casey came up the middle and scored unassisted despite a lot of contact at 2:43, and Mirabito added his second goal under a minute later.

With 54 seconds to play in the period, Mirabito came around the net and found teammate Davey Emala open in front, and Emala beat Krieger to make the score 8-6. Just 10 seconds later, Emala intercepted a Harvard pass attempt back to Krieger, and catching the goalie out of position, threw it past him to cut the Crimson lead to one heading into the half.

“In the second quarter we got a little stagnant,” Wojcik said. “We started holding the ball too much. At halftime we met, talked about some of the things we were going to adjust, and I think we came out and offensively moved the ball really well.”