Tight Opener Goes To Fresh Crimson

Prior to Saturday’s season-opener against Stony Brook, the Harvard men’s lacrosse team was the season’s only Division I program yet to play a game.

Unfortunately for the Seawolves, it didn’t take long for the Crimson to get into shape.

Harvard (1-0) opened the game with a 4-0 lead and held off a late rally en route to a 9-8 victory over Stony Brook (0-2) at LaValle Stadium in Stony Brook, N.Y. on Saturday afternoon.

The Crimson outshot the Seawolves, 12-2, in the opening frame, a quarter which ended with Harvard holding a 3-0 advantage. The score was 6-0 with 8:12 left in the half, and the Crimson entered the break with a 7-3 advantage—four of the goals having been scored by junior attacker Evan Calvert.

“We knew we needed to get the ball to Evan,” Harvard coach Scott Anderson said.

The junior, who also had a first-half assist, was slated to split time between midfielder and attackman. But his first goal, at just past midway through the first quarter, allowed the coach to leave Calvert up front.

“Finally we have him in the right place,” Anderson said. “People got him the ball and he shot well. I don’t think it was that surprising to anyone on the team.”

Calvert’s four goals and five total points both represented career-highs in a game that the Crimson never trailed or tied. That almost changed late in the game, when the Crimson had to fight off a flurry of late Stony Brook shots to hold on for the win.

After a goal from senior midfielder Tom Boylan, his second of the game, made the score 9-7 with 6:28 to play in the fourth, the Seawolves struck back to make it a one-goal game with 1:46 left in regulation.

A furious Stony Brook charge, one that featured 16 fourth-quarter shots compared to just nine for Harvard, almost sent the game into overtime, but some strong resolve from freshman netminder Joe Pike secured the opening victory.

“Joe Pike came up huge in that fourth quarter,” captain Tom Mikula said. “He had four or five huge saves, some with a man down. His play was a big confidence booster.”

Pike relieved sophomore goaltender Evan O’Donnell to start the second half, despite the fact that O’Donnell gave up just three goals in the opening 30 minutes. And although Pike allowed five shots, the 26 that he ultimately faced—compared to 11 for O’Donnell—partly accounted for the goal discrepancy.

“The decision [to use two goalies] is something I thought about all preseason,” Anderson said. “It’s not an easy thing to do, but they both played well. We’re going to play that way until I’m convinced it’s not the way.”

It was the way the game ended—by a one-goal margin—that had the Crimson confident about the opening performance.

“Last year, we really had a problem fielding the close victories,” Mikula said. “Our team is a lot more confident now. It was big to come out with the close win.”

“One-goal and overtime games are sort of the expectation,” Anderson said. “We had to dig in and play good defense, and we did.”

Though the team maintained its grip on the lead, Harvard players expressed some disappointment with their third-quarter performance.

“We showed a little bit of lack of poise at times, and had a few more penalties than we should have,” Anderson said. “But part of that is playing hard and being aggressive, and I’d rather see that.”

The Crimson saw a goal each from an array of attackmen, including junior Greg Cohen, sophomore Brooks Scholl, and senior Steve Cohen. It was the younger Cohen’s first action since May of 2004, after he missed the entire 2005 season due to an arm injury.

Harvard will travel to Amherst on Saturday for the second chapter of its three-game road trip: an afternoon date with Massachusetts. For a team that has already matched its number of road wins from 2005, a campaign in which the Crimson went 1-6, the significance of last weekend’s win was not lost on the players.

“It’s something we talked about all week,” Mikula said. “The fact that we were able to match their energy was a big plus for us.”

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu