Managing expectations is a skill in coaching just like any other, and Tommy Amaker did that expertly, calmly guiding his team to a program-best 13-1 conference record and another bid to the NCAA Tournament.
As I reflect on the last four years, I realize now that my greatest competitive battles at Harvard have come not at the MAC or in an Ec 10 lecture hall, but with my rear planted firmly on some species of futon and my hands wrapped around a small video remote.
So as I prepare to leave the Harvard bubble and enter the real world, I’ll take both the large and small memories with me. The late-night study sessions and the parties, the basketball games and the Sports Board meetings, and all of the hilarious, miserable, debaucherous, and unforgettable moments in between.
Often times, things turn out exactly as planned. But sometimes, the unexpected or, to paraphrase Vin Scully, the impossible happens. The hero becomes the goat, or the goat the hero; the heavily-favored defending champion allows 29 unanswered points in the fourth quarter and, inexplicably, loses.
While you may never guess it from her outward behavior, Anne Cheng has the killer instincts and skills on the course that have enabled her to gain the respect of her teammates and competitors.
On Oct. 26, the undefeated Harvard and Princeton football teams faced off in Cambridge, with the winner earning the driver’s seat in the race for an Ivy League championship. The showdown featured nearly a thousand yards of offense, close to 100 total points scored, and lasted just under four hours.
Looking for a spot in the next round of the ECAC playoffs, the Harvard women's ice hockey team took to the ice against Yale for 241 minutes of game time that spanned three contests from Feb. 28 to March 2.
After back surgery in the August prior to his junior year, Jake Gambitsky returned to the Harvard men’s lacrosse team before the 2014 season as a better goaltender and a better leader.
Sophomore Devin Dwyer of the Harvard men’s lacrosse team came into the 2014 campaign as the reigning All-New England Rookie of the Year. Despite the target on his back, the attackman only gotten better this season, despite teams focusing their defenses on stopping him.
A team depleted by graduation, the Olympics, and health-related departures contended for the ECAC title and finished the season 23-7-4, just one win short of its 2012-2013 total.
The Harvard men’s squash team executed a nearly flawless season: not only did the No. 1 Crimson (18-0, 7-0 Ivy) go undefeated in the regular season and go on to secure the national title with three 9-0 wins, but senior Ali Farag also captured the individual national crown.
At halftime against Cornell, the Harvard men’s lacrosse team was tied, 6-6, with the then-No. 2 Big Red. But this was not just halftime for the game. This was the halftime for the season.
Heading into its 2013-2014 season, the Harvard women’s ice hockey team was already facing an uphill battle. The Crimson had graduated its leading scorer, Jillian Dempsey ’13, and had lost three other key players along with long-tenured coach, Katey Stone, to the Olympic roster.
For the third straight year, Amanda Sobhy cruised through the CSA Individual National Championships on her way to a Ramsay Cup victory. With the triumph, Sobhy became the first player in Harvard history to win the Ramsay Cup three times.
Instead of staring down opposing teams’ batters from the mound, Laura Ricciardone was facing a much bigger challenge. Then a rising junior, she made the decision not to return to campus for the academic year in order to stay home and take care of her mother after she received a cancer diagnosis.
Dylan Murray already had a decorated squash career before he ever stepped onto a Harvard court. The five-time U.S. Junior National Champion and three-time Boy’s U19 U.S. National title-holder was also a 2013 WSF Men’s World Team Championship member.
Peyton’s tangible contributions to helping our team win games can be looked up in statistical archives and box scores, but what I think is even more worth mentioning are the intangibles that have made her a great leader in our program and in athletics in general at Harvard.
Naturally, Harvard coach Ray Leone hoped Midge Purce would make an immediate impact upon her arrival in Cambridge, as the Crimson looked to rebound from a fourth-place finish in the Ivy League in 2012. Purce, on the other hand, had only one expectation for herself and all of her teammates.
Freshman Adrienne Jarocki won the national title for women's sabré this year, the first time that crown has been won by a Harvard fencer. Jarocki’s NCAA individual trophy is also the first since outgoing senior Alexandra Kiefer won the women’s foil event three years ago.
Harvard wrestling’s Todd Preston has seen no shortage of tough competition. The sophomore has matched up against some of the top wrestlers in the country in several tournaments. However, even with this experience under his belt, the toughest match of Preston’s career took place entirely off the mats.
He may have been one of the youngest members of the Harvard men’s swimming and diving team but that didn’t stop freshman Eric Ronda from making a splash in his rookie year. In his inaugural season for the Crimson, Ronda quickly adjusted to the fast-paced tempo of collegiate swimming.
Harvard basketball fans have gotten very accustomed to the phrase “Three-pointer. Laurent Rivard” in Lavietes Pavilion over the past four years. But how could they not?
After finishing near the back of the pack in 2012, Harvard men's cross country co-captain Maksim Korolev made Ivy League history by finishing third at NCAAs.
Thanks to his ability to empathize with the players and his talent for recruiting, coach Chris Wojcik ’96 led the Harvard lacrosse program to new heights in the 2014 season.
When co-captain Brandon McLaughlin stepped onto the exhibition squash court at the CSA Team Championships, the Harvard men’s squash team only needed one more match to claim the national title.
Junior forward Steve Moundou-Missi of the Harvard men's basketball team says he has always preferred to sit back and observe, to figure out where things are going.
What would you put on your bucket list if you found out you only had a few months left to live? It’s a question people love to speculate about, but I don’t think you could possibly know the answer until you are actually faced with your own mortality.
In a season filled with triple-overtime games, nail-biting victories and defeats, and last-second field goals, what was perhaps the most crucial game for the Harvard football team was not even played by the Crimson
Riding the talents of new and newly-established members, the Harvard men’s and women’s fencing teams both made runs at Ivy League titles during the 2013-2014 season.
When Harvard claimed the 2014 Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship back in February, coach Stephanie Wriede Morawski '92 didn’t attribute the win to any individual performances. She instead characterized the victory as a test of the team’s ability to respond to adversity.
For Harvard wrestling, the 2013-2014 season was a roller coaster of highs and lows from the very beginning. The squad saw injuries, comebacks, upsets, and no shortage of tough competition throughout the year, finishing with an overall record of 4-8 and going 4-7 in EIWA conference competition.
For the Harvard skiing team, winter break is spent in a cabin in Vermont, with each skier training hard to prepare for the season against the top competition in the nation.
The Crimson’s 2013-2014 campaign, which ended in a two-game sweep by Yale in the first round of the ECAC tournament, offered few rivalry victories or memorable upsets.
With its late-season surge, Harvard seized the regular season conference title and finished its 2013 campaign with an overall record of 18-14 and a home record of 7-1 at Blodgett.
With the disappointment of not meeting expectations last season weighing heavily, the Harvard field hockey team is already looking forward to the fall with a new mentality and concrete goals in mind.
For the members of the Harvard cross country team, 2013 was the year in which they proved just how fast they could go, as both the men’s and women’s squads demonstrated that they could be competitive on the national level.
After graduating only three seniors from the 2013 squad and returning a host of players to its roster, the Harvard baseball team had its sights set on the top of the Ivy League—a place the program had not been since 2005.
While breaking over a dozen school records, the Harvard women's track and field team won both the Indoor and Outdoor Heptagonal meet titles. The men placed third at both meets, as well.
After posting just one top-five finish last season, the Harvard men's golf team surprised the conference with seven such finishes in its 2013-2014 campaign.
The women's golf team also further cemented its status at the top of the Ancient Eight with its third consecutive Ivy League title and among the elite of Division I golf programs with a Harvard-best 13th-place finish at the NCAA Division I Central Regional in Stillwater, Okla.
Coming off of a 2013 season that saw the team win just three games, the Harvard women’s lacrosse team improved its record greatly in 2014, going 9-7 and gaining a berth in the Ivy League Tournament for the first time in two years.
Although nearly every other Harvard team has wrapped up its season, it is not yet over for the men and women of the Crimson sailing team, which qualified for ICSA National Semifinals by coming in ninth in the Coast Guard Alumni Bowl last month. This marks an improvement from last season, when the Crimson failed to qualify.
Though the Crimson fell just shy of winning its third-straight Ivy crown, it still put together another strong conference campaign and proved that it can consistently compete on the national scene.
In 2014, a season-ending playoff loss in the semifinals to Princeton thwarted any attempt at another title run for the men's volleyball team. But even the loss could not diminish the success of the Crimson’s 2014 season, which was full of program bests in conference wins, national rankings, and all-EIVA player selections.
It has been a season of adjustments across the river in Newell Boathouse, as both the men’s heavyweight and lightweight teams found themselves getting used to new coaches this year.
It’s been a successful season so far at Weld Boathouse, as both the women’s heavyweight and lightweight crews head into their respective national championship regattas ranked in the top 20 nationally.
Despite a strong start to the 2014 season, the Harvard women’s water polo team could not continue its winning ways towards the end of the campaign, finishing 15-20 overall and 2-3 in the Collegiate Water Polo Association Southern Division.