Field Hockey Meets Friars

It's like what Yogi Berra once said: "It ain't over till it's over." The Harvard field hockey team is hanging on to those words for dear life.

Just four days after one of their most devastating losses ever, the Crimson (9-5, 3-2 Ivy) must quickly regroup and focus on this afternoon's matchup against the Providence Friars (6-11), a must-win game if their suddenly-slim title hopes are to remain a reality.

They'll have to shake out the cobwebs first.

"I think we're kind of still trying to pick ourselves up from the weekend," said senior tri-captain and goalkeeper Anya Cowan.

In beating Harvard 3-2, Princeton (7-5, 4-1 Ivy) broke a four-game losing streak on Saturday, winning on a shot from Melanie Meerschwam past a diving Cowan nine minutes into overtime.

The Crimson held a commanding 2-1 lead heading into the final minutes of regular time, and it appeared that Destiny herself was on the field wearing a Harvard uniform. But a late Princeton goal took the game into overtime--and gave Tigers the opening they needed to snuff out Harvard's dreams of glory. And most of its title dreams, too.

"It's tough to still talk about it now," junior forward Kate Nagle said yesterday. "It was there. We played our hearts out. We left it all out on the field."

After the loss, Harvard is tied for third place in the Ivy League alongside Cornell and Dartmouth and any playoff hopes are beyond its control.

For the Crimson to clinch a spot in the NCAA tournament, Princeton will have to lose at least one of its last two games, and the Brown juggernaut (11-2, 5-0 Ivy) needs to lose all three of its remaining match-ups, against Cornell, Fairfield and Harvard.

Besides help from the other teams, the Crimson needs to win all three of its remaining games to stay alive in the league race. After Providence today, they will play Dartmouth and Brown.

If they had won on Saturday, the Crimson would have moved into sole possession of second place. The Harvard-Brown matchup on the last weekend of the season would probably have decided the title.

But the team isn't comfortable with such "should've, would've, could've" speculation.

"We still have games to play and games to win and we need to finish up the season strong," Cowan said.

So now it is a matter of remaining focused and taking it one game at a time, according to Nagle.

"I think that we still feel that we have a lot to prove and that we can be a great team," she said.

They get their first chance today at Jordan Field against Providence.

The Friars roll into town riding a wave of momentum that will be tough for the battered Crimson to match. Providence appeared to be in top form on Sunday afternoon, convincingly defeating the Colgate by a score of 5-1.

The Friars' senior forward Carrie Leoncavallo notched two unassisted goals on the afternoon, and junior goalkeeper Heather Tattersall, in her first start of the season, allowed just one Colgate goal on 11 shots and made four saves.

Cowan will also have her hands full in goal for the Crimson, facing a Providence offensive attack that tallied 33 shots on goal Sunday afternoon.

Nagle says she is fully confident that the squad will return to its winning ways.

"We'll come out more pumped to play well," she said.

But Nagle, Cowan and the team will be facing a Providence squad anxious to salvage some dignity from an entirely lost season. This is a squad anxious to kick this Harvard team while it's down.

Cowan says she won't let it happen.

"We can make their season if they beat us tomorrow," she says. "But we're still the team to beat."