Crimson Soccer Teams Draw at Williamstown

The Harvard soccer team is positively incestuous. The Crimson kissed its sister for the third time in four outings yesterday, tying Williams, 3-3, in an overtime thriller.

Sophomore Lee Nelson again led the Harvard offense, netting all three goals to raise his team-leading total to ten.

Nelson's two first half tallies provided the Crimson with an early 2-0 lead, but then the team went flat, allowing three Williams goals before Nelson's header tied it up with 12:47 left in regulation time.

"The team's pretty disappointed with itself," Nelson said last night. "We were clearly a better team, but we've gotten into this habit of tying--and it's just a bad habit," he added.

Nasty Habit

For a while it appeared that the booters would kick the habit with Nelson's potent foot. Midway through the opening period the Crimson standout took a pass off the head of freshman Alberto Villar and knocked an offspeed shot past the Williams goalkeeper.

"I really didn't get a good shot off. I miss-hit it, but it floated in," Nelson explained afterwards.

Snet

Harvard scored again at 38:27 on a hotly disputed corner-kick. After Matt Bowyer lofted the ball in front of the net, the referee blew his whistle and some of the Williams defenders momentarily stopped playing. Nelson, however, charged the ball and headed it through the goalie's hands and into the Williams net.

"I guess we felt bad about that goal," Crimson captain Fred Herold said after the contest. "It was sort of a psychological penalty."

The infuriated Ephmen came storming back within minutes, and a long hard shot by Williams's Edson Hartman at 43:35 made it 2-1 in the half.

Williams tallied again midway through the second half on the kind of goal that's going to make netminder Herold prematurely gray. A shot by the Ephmen's Hartman was headed wide, but it deflected off a Crimson defender's foot, hooked around Herold, hit a post, and bounced into the net to tie it at two.

Williams scored the go ahead goal only 1:31 later, capitalizing on an unsettled situation in front of the Harvard net.

Nelson's late goal on a pretty, chip-shot assist from halfback Mike Smith then set the stage for two pressure-packed overtime periods in which neither team was able to score.

Yesterday's tie, which left the Crimson with a 4-2-4 season record, "definitely won't help us as far as a tournament bid goes," according to Nelson.

Fearsome Foursome

Harvard, ranked fifth in the New England Coaches' poll going into the contest, faces top-ranked Brown Saturday night in Providence in what Nelson calls "a must game." The top four teams in the rankings receive NCAA post-season tournament bids.

"The games are all big now; everyone's feeling the pressure," Herold said last night. "After our fast start, everyone's expectations and image of the team shot way up, so now a lot of the guys on the team are finding out what pressure's like."

But, the captain contended, "None of our remaining teams are unbeatable. The next couple of days are really important; we've got to get it together."