CUNNING COMMENTARY: Next Crop of Crimson Leadership Set to Go

“We already can’t wait for the offseason.”

It was an odd declaration to come in any post-game press conference, but especially in this one. The Harvard women’s soccer team had just lost to Northeastern in the first round of NCAA Tournament play, and it had lost after two overtime periods in the round of penalty kicks. The Crimson had come within two made PKs of advancing to the next round of the tournament. Its season had come down to a matter of inches and guesses, to the do-or-die contest that decides things when 110 minutes of play can’t. And Harvard came up short.

And it can’t wait for the offseason?

Here’s why: after getting its first taste of the postseason since 2004 and its first Ivy title since 1999, Harvard will be primed for another run next fall, and will be led by a talented and experienced class of rising seniors.

This certainly isn’t to downplay the contribution the five-member senior class made to this season’s success. Midfielders Erin Wylie and Rachael Lau were formidable presences in the midfield, with Wylie always lurking as a scoring threat. Nicole Rhodes anchored a solid back line. An injured Allison Keeley captained from the sideline. Maggie Robinson served as a veteran presence on the three-player goalkeeping corps.

But right behind a senior class so essential to the league champions’ success was a group of juniors having its best year yet. Now, it’s ready to lock down that Ivy title and keep it in Cambridge.

The offseason has been a pretty trying period for the Class of 2010. After the 2006 campaign, in which the Crimson won just three games with 11 freshmen on its roster, the team didn’t even have a coach until Ray Leone was named Erica Walsh’s successor in February. Even after Leone’s name was announced, Harvard practiced mostly on its own until he arrived later in the spring.

“Ever since that spring, we’ve been on a mission,” one junior said after Friday’s game.

It showed last year, when the team christened Leone’s first season in Cambridge with a big-time turnaround—Harvard won 10 games and made itself known as a force not to be overlooked in the Ancient Eight.

This season, with the talented once-inexperienced rookies all grown up as juniors, the team enjoyed its great success this decade.

Behind closed doors, the team is plenty angry that is missed out on continuing to the next round of tournament play, especially when doing so seemed within such easy reach. But at last week’s press conference, you wouldn’t know it.

Nichols. Mann. Hagner. Okuji. Dale. Kartsonis. These names will headline a senior class which plans to headline the Ivy League next season. They’ve already made their names known across the Ancient Eight: Nichols with her game-winning penalty kick to clinch the league title, Dale with her ability to step in and make key saves while splitting time between the pipes with Mann, Hagner for leading the team in scoring with her best season since she arrived in Cambridge as a big-time recruit. The list goes on.

But let’s not forget the current underclassmen who, for those who watched this team’s run to the league crown this year, already feel like seasoned veterans. Before suffering an injury with two weeks left in the season and seeing limited minutes in last weekend’s tourney game, sophomore Katherine Sheeleigh paced the Harvard offense for the second straight year and picked up a place on the All-Ivy First Team along the way. And in August, freshman Melanie Baskind arrived on Harvard’s campus to combine with Sheeleigh for the league’s most formidable 1-2 punch up top.

Two more years of the league’s last two Rookies of the Year should mean two more years for the Crimson atop the standings. Baskind leads a talented freshman class that will be one year older, and, after getting a glimpse at postseason play, a year wiser.

“Once we got a taste of the NCAA Tournament, they have the experience they haven’t had before,” Leone said. “I don’t want them to be satisfied.”

They’re not. The offseason begins now, and they can’t wait.

—Staff writer Emily W. Cunningham can be reached at ecunning@fas.harvard.edu.