Men's Soccer Opens With Yale Trouncing

It always feels good to begin a season with a win, but it feels even better when it involves trouncing Yale. Saturday evening the men’s soccer team swept into New Haven and took the season opener from the Bulldogs, beating Yale, 4-2.

Harvard dominated the entire game, starting with a goal in the 14th minute. Junior midfielder Marc Buan passed a ball into the center, where sophomore midfielder Ladd Fritz received it with his back to the goal about 15 yards out. Turning on the defender guarding him, he hit a shot into the left bottom corner of the net past the goalie, allowing Harvard to strike first.

Harvard maintained the 1-0 lead until, in a disputable play, Yale came back to score. The ball came in front of Harvard’s goal at 33:38 minutes into the game. Junior back Mike Lobach got to the ball first, but Yale forward Lindsey Williams shoved over Lobach, stole the ball and put it into the net.

“It was an unfortunate incident, a little breakdown,” said senior goalkeeper Dan Mejias, who was in the net when Yale scored its first goal. “It made us focus a little bit harder, made us regroup and get the job done.”

The Crimson was able to pull itself back together and, in the 41st minute, junior left defender Michael Cornish, from a tight angle near the edge of the 18 box, placed the ball in the net.

“It was an absolutely unbelievable shot,” said captain Nick Lenicheck. “We felt like we had dominated the first half, so this was a great way to go into halftime.”

Riding high from the momentum of the second goal, the Crimson jumped out to a quick start in the second half. In the 58th minute, the Crimson was pressing, and sophomore Kevin Ara shot the ball at the goal. Yale’s goalie Geoff Hollington blocked it, but forward Lenicheck grabbed the rebound and tapped it into the net, giving Harvard the 3-1 advantage.

Five minutes later Harvard struck again. Freshman forward Jeremy Truntzer, after attempting to score once and having his shot blocked by the goalie, took the rebound and tapped it into the open goal as the Yale goalkeeper still lay on the ground, recovering from stopping the first shot.

With the Crimson safely ahead, Head Coach John Kerr began resting some of his players, but the team continued to play well. In the 86th minute, Yale did manage to strike again. Williams scored against junior Brandon Renken, who had replaced Mejias in goal, from around six yards out.

Even though Yale scored the final goal, the Crimson by far dominated the game overall.

“We were possessing the ball very well,” Mejias said. “We flat-out outplayed them.”

After having had only two weeks of practice and two scrimmages as a team, it bodes well that the players were able to work together consistently to get Saturday’s win. The team is very young this year, even though the program only lost three seniors last year. This year’s group of freshmen constitutes Kerr’s second recruiting class for Harvard. More than half the team is made up of sophomores and juniors, and only five players are seniors. Yet for a young team, the players have had extensive playing experience, especially considering that eight of the sophomores on the team started at some point last year.

Even though the team was not in midseason form just yet, it seems that there is a great deal of potential for a good season. Last year the team started off strong and then let down when it began to be plagued by injuries. But the team is optimistic for this year.

“Hopefully as a team we have learned our lessons, and we can start off strong again and finish up strong and get into the tournament,” Lenicheck said. “Our goal is to finish high up in the Ivy League, somewhere in the top three teams.”

Crimson fans can only hope that Saturday’s win was a sign that the team has learned and will continue to improve this year.