Crimson Trounces Bowdoin Bears, 5-1

"Jesus Christ, what a landslide. I thought it would be close." Crimson fullback John Duggan was talking politics, but he might as well been commenting about the booters' game with Bowdoin yesterday afternoon.

The Crimson eleven got some early returns of their own--four goals in the first 30 minutes, to be exact--on the way to an easy 5-1 win over the Polar Bears.

If you're going to make the long trek up to Bowdoin, you might as well make it count, and the Crimson did, totally dominating the first half and then coasting home on the coattails of Lance Ayrault's four tallies--his eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh of the season.

"I would say we pretty much kicked ass," Harvard midfielder John Lyons said.

Bowdoin's big field suited the Crimson's fast wing game very well, and the defense played it's usual impressive game to effectively shut down the physical Bowdoin squad.

The Crimson never bothered to try and play a controlled ball game, but instead roamed up and down the wings at will, with the midfielders and forwards working hard to get the ball over to an unusually well-placed Ayrault.

It says something about the Crimson's new found offensive prowess that all five goals came from close range. The first tally--a Mike Smith to Ayrault combo just 5:45 into the game--was exemplary. The Crimson captain picked up the ball on the wing, dribbled down field, and passed the ball over to Ayrault, who punched it in from just six yards out.

The second binge looked like a mirror image of the first, but just substitute the name Richard Berkman for Smith. A hard cross pass to Ayrault in almost the exact same position made it easy, and Polar Bear goaltender Keith Brown just watched the ball fly into the net at the far post.

On the next goal, Leighton Welch picked up his second assist in as many games, feeding the ball to a charging Ayrault at the 18-yd. mark. The Crimson sophomore unleashed a spinning shot up high to make the score 3-0.

Ayrault didn't need anyone's help on the fourth goal. Following a Bowdoin miscue, Ayrault picked the ball up behind the goalie and simply dumped it in the net. The goal came at 29:40 of the first half.

After Jack Correia's third goal of the season made the score 5-0, Bowdoin bingoed once to make the score 5-1. Too little, too late, as they say.

The easy triumph leaves the Crimson at 9-4 for the year, and looking forward to a contest against UPenn ten days hence on the astroturf in Philadelphia. The team goal for the season was to reach the ten-win plateau, and even if the squad loses at Penn, "there's no way we will lose to Yale at home." That's what Smith says, anyway.