Men's Lax Tries to Break Into Ivy Elite

It was an up, down, and up again season for the Harvard men's lacrosse team.

Going into the spring, the team (8-5 overall, 4-2 Ivy) had high hopes of making the NCAA tournament, something the Crimson last did in 1990.

To reach it goal of making the tournament and reaching the ranks of the lacrosse elite of the country, the team set up a tremendously rigorous schedule. Between April 1 and April 19, the team faced (in order) Duke, Notre Dame, Brown, Princeton and Massachusetts--all national lacrosse powerhouses.

The squad started the season with three convincing victories over Cornell (14-11), Boston College (20-10) and Pennsylvania (21-5).

The scores just kept coming for the Crimson in those early weeks of the season, as the offense, led by junior attacker Mike Eckert and senior attacker Jamie Ames, cranked out goal after goal on helpless opposing goalies.

Eckert was the leading Crimson scorer with 66 points, leaving him 70 points shy of the all-time Harvard point total of 241 held by Grady Watts '61.

Ames finished the season as the team's second-leading scorer with 56 points, and was named the team's Most Outstanding Player.

"Ames was quite unbelievable," junior defenseman Tim Browne said. "He would only have the ball in his stick ten seconds every game, but he would score nine goals."

In the Pennsylvania contest, Eckert netted five goals and racked up seven assists for a career-high 12 points in a game.

"He's the quarterback of our offense," Browne said. "He realizes that it he steps it up next year he can be an All-American."

The Crimson benefited from considerable experience on offense.

"We pretty much had everyone back," co-captain Steve Gaffney said.

But the promising start soon ended, and the vicious run from April 1 to April 19 began.

The Harvard-Duke game represented a strong effort by the Crimson against the fifth-ranked Blue Devils, and Harvard matched Duke in almost and every area except ground balls, where Duke topped Harvard, 62-18. Though Harvard fell, 13-11, the team felt good a about its performance and felt ready to take on Notre Dame the next weekend.

But at Notre Dame, the Crimson was overwhelmed by an early onslaught of Irish goals, was down 7-3 at the end of the first quarter, and never recovered in the 15-10 loss.

Similar first quarter difficulties plagued the Crimson in the Princeton game, as the team fell behind 7-1 in the first quarter and despite a strong second half in which Harvard outscored Princeton 5-2, Princeton prevailed 11-6. These losses, coupled by defeats at the hands of Brown and UMass, conspired to keep Harvard out of the NCAA Tournament.

But the season wasn't quite over yet. Harvard rebounded from the midseason difficulties, and played perhaps its best game against archrival Yale.

"We just played, just came out fired up and did everything right," Gaffney said.

Harvard took an whopping 8-0 lead of after the first quarter, and went on to find the net 10 more times in the 18-7 drubbing of Yale.

Ames tied a Harvard record by scoring nine of Harvard's goals that day, and added an assist to push his point total into the double figures. The Crimson went to on to win its final four games of the season.

The freshman class was one of the strongest recruiting classes in the Ivy League. Led by attacker Mike Ferrucci, attacker Jim Bevilacqua and midfielder Lou Bevilacqua, the freshmen proved to be an integral part of the Crimson offense, with Ferrucci racking up numerous Ivy Rookie of the week awards.

"They were some of the best players on the team," Browne said. "Their youth was refreshing and they played well above their years."

Also leading the team were face off specialist junior Pat McCulloch, named the team's Unsung Hero and sophomore defenseman Jeremy Linzee, who was selected as the Most Improved Player.

The team will be aiming for a berth in the NCAA tournament next season, and at least one graduating senior thinks its chances are good and getting better.

"If they work really hard, they can achieve the success in lacrosse," Gaffney said.