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As my co-writer and I walked down to the sideline of Jordan Field this past Halloween, I could not help but notice how eerily quiet the Harvard men’s soccer bench, one that had been yelling at both players and refs alike all night, had gotten.

In the background, I’m sure a victorious Dartmouth team was celebrating an overtime golden goal that effectively clinched its second consecutive conference title, but all I remember was the silence on the other end, as if the Big Green players were not even there.

It felt like a scene from a boxing movie where the protagonist gets knocked down, and despite there clearly being people making noise in the background, the movie goes mute and the world seems to stop as the main character attempts to get back up.

As we approached senior forward Jake Freeman, I felt horrible.

The last thing I wanted to do was make him relive this game, especially when there was no doubt in my mind he was trying to move past it ever since the ball whizzed into the back of the Crimson net.

I did not know what to expect as my co-writer started to ask him about the game.

“It hurts right now,” Freeman responded. “But we still have two games left, and anything can happen. You don’t know.”

A few minutes later as I walked back across the river, I could not stop thinking of that interview.

Right before that response, Freeman’s voice had been shaky, and it seemed at one point like he would be unable to continue.

Yet, in that moment, the senior collected himself and firmly asserted that there was still hope, defying the distraught vibe that had been there just a few seconds before.

Freeman could have broken down, he could have said he needed a few seconds to gather himself. But instead, he insisted there was still fight left in his team.

That moment, I realized later on, epitomized the Harvard men’s soccer team.

This was a team that entered the season on a wave of hype and high expectations after two consecutive top-three finishes in the Ancient Eight before suffering a devastating personnel blow upon losing the 2014 Ivy League Defender of the Year, co-captain Mark Ashby, to injury.

This was a team that picked up only one win in its first seven games of the year but surprised many by roaring back to life at the start of Ivy League play, rattling off five wins in a row—three of them in conference games, the first three-game winning streak to start conference play since 2007.