Succesful Road Trip Begins Polo Season

The Harvard women’s water polo team opened a promising 2006 campaign with wins in three of its four matches.

On Saturday, at the Princeton Invitational in Princeton, N.J., the Crimson defeated Villanova, 11-8, not long after beating George Washington 8-2, starting its season with a perfect 2-0 record for the first time since 2004.

An 8-7 win against Maryland and a 13-5 loss against Indiana on Sunday solidified a 3-1 weekend for Harvard.

The Crimson previously trained in Puerto Rico to prepare for the main part of their season.

“We had played well in Puerto Rico,” said senior goaltender Lydia Gardner. “We were expecting to work on what we had learned in practice.”

INDIANA 13 HARVARD 5

After winning the three previous games, the Crimson could not get it done against the Hoosiers in its final match of the weekend.

Indiana, the highest-ranked of Harvard’s first four opponents, scored four straight goals in the first period and never looked back.

“There are games where your shots fall and other team’s shots don’t,” Keyser said. “Indiana just was really hot today.”

The Hoosiers took a 9-2 lead into halftime and the Crimson never really mounted a challenge.

“We knew it would be really difficult,” said Gardner. “I can’t say anything went wrong in that game. It was just our last game and we were all tired and fatigued. We had played three very tough games already and we were just physically drained.”

HARVARD 8 MARYLAND 7

Harvard survived a tough battle with the Terrapins and rallied from a one-goal deficit in the fourth quarter to win the first game on Sunday and its third straight game to open the season.

Keyser led the way with six of the team’s eight goals, including three straight in the fourth quarter when Harvard was trailing, 6-5.

“In any game, you try to take shots that are of the highest percentage,” Keyser said. “I just wound up being in the position to take the high percentage shots.”

Keyser’s performance left her teammates in awe.

“Arin carried the team,” Gardner said. “She really stepped up when we needed her to. It was so much motivation for her to go out and take care of buisness.”

The 6-5 margin that Harvard overcame was the first deficit of the weekend that it had faced.

Defeating a strong Maryland team was the highlight of the weekend for the Crimson.

Although it was only the Terrapins’ second year as a varsity team, Maryland had recently recruited some talented freshmen.

“Maryland is a new, strong, talented team,” Keyser said. “We were really happy to beat them.”

HARVARD 11 VILLANOVA 8

The Crimson survived the fast Wildcats and fatigue to win in the afternoon game on Saturday, overcoming 11 ejections to pull away in the third period.

Sophomore driver Vivian Liao scored four times to lead the Harvard and captain driver Arin Keyser added three goals, as the Crimson won its second game in several hours.

This match was much closer than the first one, as Harvard had trouble containing Villanova’s motion offense which drew many ejections.

“Villanova runs a motion offense with a lot of driving,” Keyser said. “The ejections were a direct result of that offensive movement.”

The Wildcats used those ejections to keep the game close for the first half, but then fatigue set in.

Villanova was also playing its second game of the day.

“The Wildcats hung with us for two quarters, but in the third period, they got tired and we pulled away,” Keyser said.

The Crimson was able to deal with fatigue much better than did its opponent.

“We don’t have a deep bench, so we wanted to slow the game down and play a real halfcourt game,” Keyser said. “We wanted to use the whole shot clock. This was important for us the whole weekend.”

Freshman Nicola Pearlman got her first collegiate action in goal for the Crimson and played well enough for Harvard to win.

HARVARD 8 GEORGE WASHINGTON 2

Harvard opened its 2006 spring regular season with an easy win over the Colonials on Saturday morning.

The Crimson led 3-1 at halftime and scored three goals in the third period to pull away.

Harvard received a strong defensive performance from Gardner and its defensemen, who prevented George Washington from getting anything done close to the net.

“Our strategy on defense was to deny the Colonials the ball in the 2-meter area in front of the net,” Keyser said. “George Washington is not very strong shooting outside, so we tried to force them to shoot from there.”

“We played solid team defense and were very balanced offensively,” Gardner added.

On offense, Keyser, Lauren Snyder and Liao each scored twice for the Crimson.

—Staff writer Ted Kirby can be reached at tjkirby@fas.harvard.edu.