Forwards Barrage Yale For Win

After a rough couple of weekends, the No. 17 Harvard men’s lacrosse team (6-4, 3-2 Ivy) put itself back on track in the Ivy League with a 12-4 win Saturday afternoon against Yale (5-8, 1-5 Ivy) at Johnson Field in New Haven, CT.

The win was a much-needed turnaround from the previous two weeks in which the squad lost on home turf two of its three League matchups.

“After the Princeton loss we all thought we played a good game but we didn’t play a great game which we needed to do to win,” senior captain Tom Mikula said. “To come out against and dominate our rivals was huge for us.”

The Bulldogs found the offensive attack of Harvard sophomore Brooks Scholl and juniors Evan Calvert and Greg Cohen to be simply unstoppable. Together the three players tallied eight points, with Calvert scoring five goals alone. Senior Steve Cohen added three goals and an assist.

“[Calvert] is a unique weapon,” Crimson coach Scott Anderson said. “When he is in an open space and he gets the ball, he’s going to score a high percentage because he has a quick release. One of the ways we’ve matured as a team is to recognize him as having that strength; they’re finding him better.”

The game started off with an early 1-0 lead when Greg Cohen found his brother, Steve, for the goal with just 1:31 gone in the first quarter.

Although the Bulldogs responded with a goal of their own just over two and a half minutes later, Harvard responded with four straight scores, thanks to two Calvert goals and one from each of the Cohen brothers to give the team a 5-1 lead at the end of the first.

“Since the offense was scoring, it let our defense go out and take some chances,” Anderson said. “We didn’t give Yale a chance to get on track, which was very important.”

The second frame started off slowly, with Yale posting a score after almost five and a half minutes, but Calvert scored his third and fourth goals on assists from Scholl and senior Peter Doyle with under six minutes left to send the Crimson into halftime with a 7-3 lead.

After the break, the pounding continued.

Despite a Bulldog goal with 14:07 left in the third, Harvard responded with five straight scores going into the fourth.

Thanks to continued strong play from the Crimson goalies, Yale failed to score for over 28 minutes in the second half, posting the third-frame goal and just one other with 18 seconds remaining in the game.

“Yale’s the kind of team that takes a lot of shots,” Mikula said. “Our game-plan was to let them take the outside shots, and our goalies came through today. When the defense did break down, they bailed us out a little bit. To have them back there, switching up looks, it’s given a lot of offenses a lot of trouble.”

Senior Craig Thomas made his second save of the season, entering the match with 1:19 remaining.

“Thomas came in in the last few minutes and that’s huge for a kid who’s been on the team for four years,” Mikula said. “It’s pretty rewarding to them—it’s something we like to see and to give those guys a chance to do.”

The squad will hope to continue to prove its strength against No. 2 Hofstra next weekend.

“This time of year, that’s exactly what you want,” Anderson said. “You want a team ranked highly, you want to get an impact win: a win that will help you in your ranking and demonstrate where your team is in division one. It’s a great opportunity for us.”

—Staff writer Madeleine Shapiro can be reached at mshapiro@fas.harvard.edu.