Tough Conference Weekend Strikes Crimson

During the weekend, the Harvard women’s water polo team faced the daunting task of facing perennial division champion Hartwick, division rival Brown, which had already beaten the Crimson twice this year, and ranked non-league foe Michigan.

While Harvard (10-11, 2-5 CWPA Northern Division) put up a gallant effort against each of its opponents, it could not scratch out a win.

The Crimson fell to the No. 13-ranked Hawks (20-9, 7-0) 16-7 at home on Friday and lost 10-6 to the Bears (11-13, 4-3) on Saturday afternoon in Providence, before losing to Wolverines (22-11, 6-1 CWPA Western Division) 12-9 in the evening.

MICHIGAN 12, HARVARD 9

Harvard fought hard against the No. 17-ranked Wolverines, but Michigan scored four times in the fourth quarter to win in Providence.

Captain driver Arin Keyser scored four times for the Crimson, while senior 2M-O Molly Mehaffey added three.

“This was a great game for us,” Keyser said. “We came out really motivated after the loss to Brown and our shots went down early.”

Harvard took leads of 6-5 and 7-6 in the third quarter, but was unable to hold on to the advantages.

Despite the Wolverines’ high ranking, the Crimson stayed even with it for most of the game, staying tied with Michigan at the end of the first quarter 2-2, and only being down 5-4 at halftime.

“The fact that we played them close shows we can hang with anybody,” Keyser said.

BROWN 10, HARVARD 6

Harvard lost its third game in as many tries to the Bears, falling in its first game on Saturday.

The Crimson had a 5-4 lead in the third erased by four unanswered Brown goals in that quarter.

“We have played them so many times, we know who is a threat on their team and what their strategy is,” Keyser said. “It comes down to execution.”

Like the previous two meetings with Brown, the game was close throughout, although the margin of victory was greater than the Bears’ 3-2 win in Cambridge and 6-5 win in Maryland.

“We were disappointed with how we played defensively,” Keyser said. “We allowed a lot of counter-attack goals, which isn’t fair to [senior goaltender] Lydia [Gardner].”

Harvard led for most of the first half, but Brown tied the score right before halftime to go into the break with the score 4-4.

The Bears and Crimson will almost certainly meet in Cambridge for the Northern Championships on April 22. The winner of that game—“For all the marbles,” Harvard coach Erik Farrar said—will be assured a spot at the Eastern Championships a week later in Providence.

HARTWICK 16, HARVARD 7

In only its second home game of the season, Harvard opened the weekend by staying close to No. 13-ranked Hartwick for two quarters, before the Hawks blew the game open in the second half.

“We gave up too many unnecessary goals,” Farrar said. “Hartwick is a good team and they are going to get some hard-fought, well-earned goals because they are highly skilled.

“But we didn’t make them work hard enough. We gave up some really unnecessary counter-attack goals and we just can’t do that. That is a huge difference,” he added.

The Crimson had leads of 1-0 and 2-1 in the first quarter, and ended the first quarter tied 2-2. The Hawks, however, scored five times in the second quarter to take a 7-4 lead into the half, and scored four straight times in the third.

“We made some serious blunders,” Farrar said. “People were leaving and we just didn’t go with them. We gave up way too many odd-women rushes that didn’t need to happen, so we need to make some adjustments there.”

Hartwick scored five counter-attack goals, compared to none for Harvard.

Keyser and Mehaffey each scored twice for the Crimson, which scored more than twice as many goals than it did in its previous game against the Hawks, a 12-3 loss in Oneonta, N.Y. on March 11.

“I thought we did really well,” Farrar said. “Our offense was cooking. In the first ten minutes of the game, we scored more goals than the last time we played them in 28 minutes. We were effective that way.”

With the win, Hartwick moved closer to securing its sixth straight CWPA Northern Division Championship.

The Hawks are the top-ranked team in the CWPA poll.

“They are a very, very good team,” Farrar said. “They are not ranked 13th in the country for nothing. They are legit and very skilled. When you play a team like that, you can’t make mistakes, or at least very many of them. Sometimes you can get away with them, but they are going to punish you. We made too many and they punished us.”

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