M. Booters Trapped In Funk

Near the end of September, the Harvard men's soccer team--riding high in the Eastern and national polls--looked like the new princes of college soccer.

Now after a shocking 2-0 loss (well, losses aren't too shocking these days) against Boston College yesterday in Chestnut Hill, the Crimson has moved out of its palace on the hills and into a low-rent, run-down apartment in Funk City.

Yep, the magic of Locker-Soccer having turned to despair of Locker-Losses, with Harvard now having dropped six of its last eight games. The other two games? A crushing of eminently crushable Hofstra and a mediocre tie against mediocre Cornell.

"Through this whole streak we've been going through, the morale of the team is low," freshman midfielder Chris Wojcik said. "I just wish we could go back to the beginning."

Ah, the beginning. In the beginning, there were late-game drives to the net. In the beginning, there were backs cleaning the ball out of the penalty box. In the beginning, there was luck.

Yesterday at Chestnut Hill, Harvard had none of these. The team played even with the Eagles for the duration of regulation time, but had trouble finishing off its key plays. And in the overtime session, no one was able to step up and finish the game off.

Instead, as the Crimson couldn't get its head in the game, BC put its head into it--two heads into the net in particular. Back Marius Lund bumped in a cross shot at 97:22 (in the first overtime) and sealed the victory at 110:47 (second overtime), completing a corner kick with his cranium.

Lots of Injuries

What went wrong? Harvard played hard today, unlike some games over the past few weeks, but it was forced to make adjustments because of injuries. Ailing junior back Ping Li could only see limited time today, and junior midfielder Joe Bradley and sophomore back Tom Marcotullio are both out for the season.

As a result, Coach Steve Locker had freshman Ted Westhelle, junior Josh Martin and sophomore Bo Bernhard playing at defense for the first time this season.

That crew held BC silent during regulation, but those brief lapses at the end allowed the Eagles to take the game.

"We played great for 80 minutes. In 10 minutes of mental lapses, they capitalized. Today's goals were just defensive mistakes," sophomore back Pepper Brill said.

Locker said he did see something positive about today's game. "At least we got a good effort today. They know they played hard. We just a bit unlucky. Some other games were just going through the motions, but not today," the rookie coach said.

Motions or not, Harvard is mired in a serious slump, and, though the Ivy title isn't mathematically out of reach, the Crimson does not have a chance of winning the title the way it's been playing.

No Kidding Around

Locker, for one, isn't kidding himself about the future of this season. There's no talk about the Ivy title, only about ending the season on a "positive note" and, of course, planning for next year. "They're great kids. This is a team of the future when we combine it with a few good recruits," Locker said.

BOSTON COLLEGE, 2-0 at Chestnut Hill Harvard  0  0  0  0  --  2 BC  0  0  1  1  --  0

G: Harvard--None; BC--M. Lund (2). A: Harvard--None.; BC--P. Keegan; D. Atanasov. S: Harvard--S. Salisbury 7; BC--M. Bala 4