Shapiro's Overtime Winner Keeps Crimson Atop Ivies

Traveling north to Ithaca, N.Y., the Harvard field hockey squad maintained its first-place position in the Ivy League with a 3-2 overtime win over Cornell Sunday afternoon at Schoellkopf Field.

The Crimson (7-4, 3-0 Ivy) remains undefeated in league play while the Big Red (6-3, 3-2 Ivy) dropped to fourth place, previously tied for second with Princeton. The victory also snapped Cornell’s three-game winning streak.

The Big Red held two one-goal leads during the 71 minutes of play but was finally put to rest after a textbook penalty corner executed by Harvard’s co-captains. The game-winning goal was assisted by a push from sophomore Elizabeth Goodman-Bacon to co-captain Jana Berglund, who stopped and set the ball for the shot by fellow co-captain Devon Shapiro.

“It’s exciting to win in overtime,” coach Sue Caples said. “It’s like a walk-off home run kind of thing.”

The well-matched league foes showed off their defense in the first half and offense in the second. The game remained scoreless through the first frame as Harvard goalkeeper junior Kylie Stone registered two saves and Cornell counterpart Shannon Prescott tallied three.

In the second half, the two teams traded goals twice.

“This was our most complete game of the season,” Caples said. “No one ever plays a perfect game but we were very solid and really stepped it up in the second half.”

“It felt like it was neck-and-neck the whole time,” Berglund said. “We would step up, they would step up, and vice versa.”

The Big Red struck first with an unassisted shot from the top of the circle, just over five minutes after halftime. The Crimson was quick to answer, as junior Kristen Bannon deflected a shot by Shapiro into the net.

A mere 53 seconds after Bannon’s tally, Cornell pushed one in to take its second lead of the game.

A pair of rookies kept Harvard alive by tying the contest at 2 in the 57th minute. Freshman Maggie McVeigh, who later forced the game-winning corner, scored off of an assist by fellow first-year Leigh McCoy on a 2-on-1.

Harvard’s depth and versatility this season was especially noticeable during Sunday’s comeback rally.

The team’s tallies came from an array of players from multiple spots on the field. The coach and captains agreed that the squad’s depth has continued to develop as the season has gone on.

“We have a ton of depth and we did a great job of scoring off multiple fields of play and off offensive penalty corners,” Shapiro said. “Our participation all over the field is great.”

“We are able to score from many areas and that’s a great weapon to have,” Caples added. “We have some good depth and many players capable of putting the ball in the net and that makes us a dangerous team to defend against.”

The Crimson looks to continue its winning ways as the undefeated No. 1 in the Ivy League when it travels to New Haven, Conn., to face Yale on Saturday.

—Staff writer Kara T. Kelley can be reached at kkelley@fas.harvard.edu.