“The officials of the lacrosse team are in communication with Coach Warwick, who has coached the University’s championship twelves for two years,” the paper read. “Though he has not yet signed a contract, he has signified his intention of returning, and it is hoped that he will be on hand for the early games, if not before.”

But Warwick, the captain and manager of a team in Toronto, never returned that season, leaving Gustafson at the helm of the squad.

Once the rookie coach had finalized his roster, the team got set to begin its championship defense.

“Though this year’s schedule is considered an unusually difficult one, there is no reason to believe that the team will fall to uphold its enviable past record,” The Crimson wrote in a season preview.

Harvard began its schedule with a “southern” roadtrip, playing Penn at Franklin Field on April 12 and the Maryland Agricultural College (now the University of Maryland at College Park) on April 14.

The Quakers and Terrapins were no match for the Crimson, which won by respective scores of 10-0 and 12-0. In the latter contest, drizzling rain created a slippery field with three inches of mud, but the weather did nothing to stop a potent Crimson offense.

“The Aggies were ragged on attack and Harvard outclassed them in teamwork,” read the next day’s Washington Herald. “The college boys [from Maryland] put up a game fight against apparently big odds.”

Next up was an 8-3 exhibition victory over Navy in Annapolis, a win that, according to the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, “was considered especially encouraging as the opponents were heavy football men who were playing lacrosse in order to get into shape for football in the fall.”

But during the contest, Harvard lost Mackenzie, Simmons, and third attack Percival Brundage to injury, leaving the team in “crippled condition” for its next exhibition contest against Johns Hopkins.

A perennial championship contender, the Blue Jays had also won many of the era’s titles, including at least a share in every year from 1906 to 1909 and again in 1911. And according to the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, in 1913 Johns Hopkins was considered to have “the best team which that University has supported for years.”

Twelve months prior, Harvard had knocked off the Blue Jays, the Southern Division champions, to win the 1912 national championship despite losing a 5-4 contest in Baltimore during the regular season.

At the 2013 preseason meeting in Sever, Marsters had noted that “Harvard teams had now attained a standard of excellence where the defeat of Johns Hopkins was most to be desired and worked for.” But during the teams’ 1913 exhibition, on the first sunny day of the road trip, the Crimson showed it was not quite at John Hopkins’ level, falling, 8-3.

Luckily for Harvard, the scrimmage did not count, and it remained undefeated after its early season road trip.

WILD, WILD WEST

After a week on the road, the Crimson returned to Cambridge and played its first—and only—home contest of the season against Stevens Institute of Technology on April 27 at Soldiers Field.