Queens Takes Crown From Women's Water Polo

In the sweltering heat of Blodgett Pool, the Harvard women's water polo team split a pair of games Saturday, vanquishing Brown, 9-5, but succumbing to Queens' College in overtime, 6-5.

Both games were part of a weekend tournament in which Harvard took second place.

The Queen's game began very well for the Crimson, as it jumped out to a first-quarter 3-1 lead on goals from Lynley Ogilvie, freshman Stacey Moran, and Co-Captain Catherine Ysreal.

When Moran tallied again at the start of the second half, the squad moved to a commanding 4-1 lead.

Sensing defeat, the visitors began to eschew an unsuccessful inside game in favor of outside shooting.

"Queens is a club team," said Harvard Coach Chris Hafferty after the game, "which means that some of them have been playing together for many years. They know how to adjust when things go wrong."

"They took some chances," said sophomore Emily Ozer.

And the gambles worked.

Just two minutes into the fourth quarter, Queens had scored on three long shots to tie the game at four.

Hafferty noted that Harvard committed too many fouls and had to play one-man down too often: "We made a lot of little mistakes, a lot of little fouls which hurt us."

And at the start of the overtime, a Crimson player had to leave the game for holding. Within three seconds of her departure, the Knights had scored to possess their first lead of the day, 5-4.

The game was not over, however. Co-Captain Kelley Withy grabbed a loose ball in front of the Queens net, faked the netminder into the air, waited for the duped goalie to fall back down, and then lofted the ball over her head to tie the score at 5-5.

But Queens' outside game still proved to be Harvard's nemesis, as a shot from 20 yards out closed the scoring at 6-5 with 36 seconds left in the second overtime.

The loss blemished the Crimson's previously perfect 9-0 record, and came at the hands of a team it had beaten just last week during a tournament at Brown.

"It's better that we lose now than in the Nationals," Withy said.

In the afternoon game, Harvard beat Brown, 9-4.

Agression and violence were the two main attributes of this game. "We really have a big rivalry with them," Ozer said, "and they were trying to play extra violent with us, so that we would react and then maybe get ejected from the game."

Hafferty said that Brown's assaults were especially targeted to incite Ysreal, Withy and Ozer.

"But this tactic threw them off their game more than it helped them," said Hafferty.

Due to aggressive tactics which focused more on attacking the man than the ball, there were several occasions when the ball was free in front of the Brown net. Ysreal used two of these free opportunities to score goals in the third quarter, giving Harvard a 5-3 lead.

With this advantage, Harvard began to toy with the Brown players, lofting the ball over their heads when an aggressive swimmer would swim straight at them. A few passing sequences between Withy and Ogilvie led to scores which widened the lead to 7-3, put the game out of reach, and earned Harvard its second place finish in the tournament.

Hafferty found the second game especially encouraging because Harvard reversed the mistakes it had made in the earlier game. "[Brown] committed the fouls in this game, and that let us have the advantages."

The Crimson's next series of games comes next week in a tournament at Queens.