Field Hockey Nearly Upsets Seventh-Ranked Northeastern

At the end of yesterday's Harvard-Northeastern field hockey game, Husky coach Cheryl Murtagh said to one fan, "I never want to play here again." One can hardly blame her.

No. 7 Northeastern survived the scare to end all scares at Cumnock Field, defeating Harvard 2-1 in double overtime when Husky Regina Carl stole a Crimson pass, dribbled towards the right post and shot across her body into the cage.

When Harvard last hosted Northeastern two years ago, the Crimson won on a goal with four seconds left. Yesterday, Harvard led for 16 minutes of the game and didn't trail until its end. The grass of Cumnock has not been kind to Northeastern.

After all, it took more than 85 minutes of field hockey yesterday for this game to be decided. Harvard took a 1-0 lead early in the second period, Northeastern tied it up and the overtimes were highlighted by wild, back-and-forth play.

"I think we played a great game," Harvard coach Sue Caples said. "We played with the seventh-ranked team in the country, and at the end we just didn't have the punch and they capitalized on a turnover. They have some tremendous hockey players, and we gave them a chance and they're going to be able to capitalize on that."

The Huskies stormed out of the gate to start the game, earning a penalty corner in the first four minutes. But the Crimson (9-7, 4-1 Ivy) slowly built up its counterattack, so that by the end of the half things were dead even.

The second half, on the other hand, looked like a photo negative of the first. Harvard earned an early corner, scored on it and then Northeastern regained its momentum to retie.

The Crimson's goal came on its first corner of the day. Sophomore Tara LaSovage stopped the ball for co-captain Daphne Clark, who dribbled past Northeastern's fly defender and ripped a shot that deflected off a Northeastern stick and into the upper part of the net.

"The post player came off [the post], because the flyer came out," Clark said. "[So] I put the ball beside the player, the post player came off and she deflected it in."

All of a sudden, Harvard held a 1-0 lead; however, that would be the Crimson's final score of the day. Harvard did not have very many attacks on the game, and when the forwards did get the ball downfield oftentimes the Crimson would foul in the arc.

As a result, the statistics were heavily in favor of Northeastern. The Huskies outshot the Crimson, 28-9, and had 13 more corners. The only advantage Harvard ever had was on the scoreboard; that soon changed.

After the game, Harvard goaltender Anya Cowan said that it wasn't a very good goal, but it counted nevertheless. With 17 minutes left to play, Husky Karrie Danilecki broke towards the left post and softly shot a shot past Cowan, tying the game.

"I was caught outside my post, so I didn't have a very good angle," Cowan said.

The goal ended a long Husky offensive surge. For the preceding seven minutes, Northeastern had blitzed Cowan and her cage with corners, rushes, passes inside the arc, everything.

A few minutes after the Huskies scored, Harvard called a timeout, and the rest of regulation had few attacks except for the final two minutes. Then Northeastern had three corners, including one with 20 seconds left that Cowan saved as the clock ticked to zero.

One couldn't blame Harvard for awaiting overtime, for the extra sessions have been kind to the Crimson this season. Harvard was 3-0 in O.T. this year before now; however, the Crimson could outrun those teams with ease. The Huskies were a different case.

Overtime in field hockey is 7-on-7, so there are a lot more open spaces, which means that there's a lot more room for individual play and costly errors.

That was exactly how Northeastern scored. After a first overtime in which the Huskies mostly outplayed the Crimson, Northeastern ended the game less than a minute into the second. Clark, sophomore Judy Collins and freshman Katie Schoolwerth got caught trying to pass backwards to each other, and eventually Carl caught on, intercepted one such pass and rumbled down the field.

"I passed it back to Judy, and they got on top of her," Clark said. "She passed it back to Katie, and then it was just a bad pass, I don't really know what happened. Carl--she was the strength of their team."

She was also wearing astroturf shoes, which are essentially sneakers. So perhaps the best way for Northeastern to defeat Cumnock is to pretend that it doesn't exist. Northeastern  2 Harvard  1