M. Water Polo Downed at Eastern

With just 18 seconds left in the first game of the Eastern Championships, co-captain Rick Offsay and senior John Lynch gave the Harvard men’s water polo team the chance to take home first, second or third place with a timely block against Salem International. The block allowed the Crimson to take the game 9-8, and move on to the semifinals of the Easterns for the first time since the seniors were freshman.

Though they came up short, losing to Princeton and Navy, and took fourth place in the tournament, the players left Bucknell with a sense of pride as their season came to a close.

“Our goal had been to make it to Easterns,” Offsay said, a feat Harvard has not been able to accomplish for the past two years.

The seniors, and particularly Offsay, played extremely well in their final contests against the best teams in the East. Offsay scored one shy of half the team’s total goals on the weekend, while Mike Gerrity netted four and Lynch and Greg Marvin-Smith added one each—accounting for 14 of the 17 team goals.

“Our seniors are very good, and it’ll be tough losing them,” sophomore John Voith said. “But they set a precedent in terms of showing us what we can do next year.”

Whether or not the team would even make it to Easterns was dubious at the start of the season with the team’s shaky play, and its chances were jeopardized once again after some injuries.

“It would’ve been easy for us to get down on ourselves, but we trained really hard for the last three weeks,” Offsay said. “I have never been prouder of a team. They’re a great group of guys, not only from a team standpoint, or a water polo standpoint, but just a great group to be with.”

NAVY 10, HARVARD 5

The Crimson picked itself up after its tough loss to the Tigers to face Navy in a contest that would determine third place at Easterns.

“We wanted to win one more for our seniors,” Voith said.

But while Harvard was able to keep the game fairly close in the early portion of the game, it lost its edge, allowing the Midshipmen to top the Crimson.

“We made mistakes they were able to capitalize on,” Offsay said.

In the first half, the Harvard defense was able to hold Navy to four goals. Unfortunately for the Crimson, the Navy defense was even stronger, keeping Harvard scoreless for 14 straight minutes.

“In the whole first half, we didn’t get off many shots,” Voith said. “You can’t score if you’re not shooting.”

When the Crimson’s offensive spurt finally arrived later in the game, it was too little, too late. Offsay contributed three goals, while Marvin-Smith and Lynch each tallied one apiece, a strong finish for their final Harvard water polo game.

When the two teams faced each other earlier in the season in the first game of the ECACs, Navy spoiled Harvard’s hopes for success early in the season. The Midshipmen won the contest 11-10 by scoring a controversial goal in the final seconds of the game, after the buzzer rang to signal the end of the game but before the clock ran out.

Though they lost, just being able to play Navy for the third-place spot at Easterns was exciting, especially for the seniors. Four years ago, the Harvard water polo program took third in the Eastern Division, and after two disappointing seasons, the seniors are happy the team is nearly back to where it was when they arrived.

“My freshman year…I took it for granted that was how it was going to be,” Offsay said. “Now, I’m leaving with the team on a high note. They’re playing well and getting along well. I’ll take that away as much as how I actually played.”

PRINCETON 12, HARVARD 3

Princeton showed the Crimson it was going to dominate the entire game—and ruin Harvard’s hopes for playing in the championship game—within the first seven minutes, when the Tigers jumped out to a strong four-goal lead and held Harvard scoreless.

“Coach called a time out and told us we needed to make it up one goal at a time,” Voith said. “But eventually their lead was just insurmountable.”

Two of the Crimson’s three goals came in the second quarter, when it outscored Princeton 2-1. Harvard was able to eke out one more before the game was over in the fourth. But the Tigers, up 5-2 at the half, scored seven goals in the latter part of the game.

“We just weren’t executing and doing the things we did against Salem,” Offsay said.

Offsay, Gerrity, and freshman Brian Kuczynski each netted a goal in the losing effort.

HARVARD 9, SALEM INTERNATIONAL 8

After playing a closely contested 27:42, the Crimson’s hopes for winning its opening bout at Easterns rested upon the shoulders of its defense.

In the final moments of the game, a Salem player drew an ejection, giving the Tigers the opportunity to tie up the game and send it into overtime. But on Salem’s final drive, Offsay and Lynch blocked the final shot fired at the goal, sending Harvard to the second round.

The four goals Harvard scored in the third quarter—two back-to-back from Offsay on passes from Lynch and Gerrity—proved to be crucial to its success, especially since the team was shut out for the final period of the game.

“We had never seen Salem before, and they had never seen us,” Voith said. “But by the second half we knew where their offensive threats were. Their offense became predictable.”

Throughout the game, Offsay and Gerrity led the offense, scoring four and three goals, respectively. Sophomore Mike Garcia netted the other two goals for the team.

All eight of Salem’s goals were scored by two players, Danilo Lazarevic and Tomislav Popovic, who tallied four goals each and made sophomore Eric Byrd work hard to keep the Crimson in the game.

“They had two great players on their team who were going to get their goals,” Offsay said. “But Eric did a nice job in goal of keeping it close.”

The contest was evenly matched for the first two periods, with the teams trading the lead. Harvard and Salem were tied at three after the first quarter and at five after the half.

“We knew if we stuck with the game we had coming in we would win,” Voith said.

—Staff writer Megha Parekh can be reached at parekh@fas.harvard.edu.