Stickwomen Drop Finale, 2-0, End Disappointing Season at 5-10

The sun never really shined on the Harvard field hockey team this season.

And when it finally broke though the clouds yesterday--just seconds after the Yale squad had scored its first goal of the day--the sun signalled not the dawn of a Crimson resurgence but the end of a gloomy season.

The Bulldogs were to add a second goal late in the game to clinch a 2-0 victory over a host Harvard team, dropping the Crimson's final overall record to 5-10 and sending them into the cellar of the Ivy League for the first time since 1980.

The once highly-touted stick-women, picked by most observers to wear the Ancient Eight crown this year, finished their 1984 campaign yesterday at Soldier's Field in exactly the same they had played all season long.

They kept the ball in the offensive zone for almost the entire game, outshot Yale 16-6 and held a 20-3 edge in penalty corners and long hits. And they thoroughly dominated play for all but a few of the contest's 70 minutes.

And they were shut out--for the tenth time this year.

Goose Eggs

The Crimson, as usual, dominated the first half, although neither team put together any serious scoring threat. The half ended with a pair of goose eggs on the scoreboard.

Nine minutes into the second stanza there was still no score, and the Harvard-Yale series--which produced scoreless, double-overtime ties in 1982 and 1983--had now gone more than 200 minutes of game time without a score.

But the Bulldogs made sure that string didn't last any longer. With 25:45 remaining in the contest, Yale forward Deb Siegel fired a penalty corner at Crimson goaltender Kristen Abely, who kicked the ball back out onto the waiting stick of Eli Cindy Bieler.

According to Crimson Co-Captain Andy Mainelli, the Harvard defense apparently thought the officials then blew their whistles to kill the play.

Unfortunately for Harvard, they didn't. So Bieler took the opportunity to deposit the ball deep in the Harvard goal, and the Crimson stick women once again found themselves on the short end of the score.

Absurd

Harvard regrouped and put on a determined rush, producing an almost absurd number of scoring chances.

Alicia Clifton came close just two minutes after Bieler's score. Trina Burnham, following up a beautiful steal and drive into the Yale end, sent a blistering shot at Eli goalie Nada Sellers with 15 minutes left.

The barrage didn't let up. Bambi Taylor then sent a penalty corner rocketting at an outstretched Sellers, and Crimson Co-Captain Andy Mainelli--who played the second half with visible intensity-followed that up with a diving shot that Sellers again turned away.

The talented Bulldog netminder made save after save 10 in all--to stifle Harvard's hopes.

But the Crimson stick women didn't take advantage of the opportunities that Sellers did give them, consistently failing to pounce on rebounds from their dozen second-half shots.

"We were so surprised to have all those shots," Mainelli said after the game, that "we weren't on [Sellers'] pads for rebounds."

When the Crimson offensive firepower finally let up, the Elis snuck the ball down into the Harvard end, and with 4:07 left on the clock Siegel took a Lucy Bernholz feed and knocked it by Abely to give Yale (now 5-7-2 overall and 2-3-1 Ivy) an insurance goal that would seal Harvard's fate.

Insurance

The whistle blew four minutes later on the careers of seven Harvard seniors as well as on the Harvard season, ending a campaign in which the Crimson never seemed to find its groove, especially in the scoring department.

In fact, the Crimson, which recorded its first losing season in three years, failed to score in every game it lost; meanwhile, it notched just 12 goals all year, with half of those coming in one contest.

Its lack of scoring was just a symptom, though, of deeper problems that ravaged the once mighty Harvard squad, a team that only a year ago finished just one-half game behind Ivy League champion Penn.

An inconsistent defense, a dearth of pure scorers, and an erratic chemistry all prevented the Harvard squad from blossoming into an effective unit.

And not even the arrival of yesterday's sun could give new light to the once high hopes of the 1984 Harvard field hockey squad.

THE NOTEBOOK: The Crimson's .333 winning percentage was the worst single-season mark in Harvard Coach Edie Mabrey's six years here... Yale finished in fourth place in the league.