Huskies’ Tally Enough For Win

The Harvard field hockey team fought hard in a nail-biter against Northeastern but ultimately fell, 1-0, at the Huskies’ Sweeney Field on Monday. The Crimson had a couple of chances to tie the game in the final minutes but was unable to find the equalizer.

The Crimson (6-5, 2-1 Ivy), coming off its first home loss and the end of a four-game winning streak after Saturday’s loss against Stanford, was looking to return to the win column against a formidable Northeastern team (9-5, 3-2 Colonial Athletic Association), who remains undefeated at home this year.

“We were really excited heading in [to the matchup],” co-captain Carly Dickson said. “We played really well against Stanford but didn’t get the result we wanted, so we were looking to get a little revenge on the weekend. People were really energetic going in, but our legs were a little tired.”

Behind a good defense and a great performance from goalie Cynthia Tassopoulos, Harvard was able to limit the host’s offense, which resulted in a closely-contested match.

“Our defense did a job today of limiting their opportunities in the circle,” co-captain Georgia McGillivray said. “They have some have some quick forwards, and we knew that going in, so we adjusted our defense to limit their ability to do anything in the circle.”

Tassopoulos ended up recording a season-high 18 saves.

“Cynthia was great as always,” McGillivray said. “She did a great job communicating to the defense so that everything was always taken care of on that end. She also had some great saves. They had a lot of shots coming in, and she had a lot of action back there, and she did really well.”

The Huskies got the only goal of the game when senior Kaela Barker put one past Tassopoulos off an assist by Northeastern junior Allison Conti about 25 minutes into the contest.

Neither team was able to score the rest of the half, as Tassopoulos and Huskies goalie Lizzie Priest shut down the opposing offenses with seven and four saves, respectively.

Northeastern had a great opportunity to increase its lead four minutes into the second half when the host put three shots on net within 30 seconds. But Tassopoulos was there to stop all the scoring opportunities, keeping the Crimson within striking distance to even the score.

The rest of the half was much the same, as neither team capitalized on its scoring chances.

With the score still set at 1-0, a late Harvard charge threatened to tie the game. The visitors dominated possession of the ball in the Huskies zone during the final minutes of the contest.

“The last three minutes, we were in their circle the entire time,” Dickson said. “We really were pushing for a tying goal, and [sophomore] Rachel Rosenfeld was really close [to scoring], but we were unlucky and unable to put it in.”

McGillivray also felt that the Crimson could have tied the game up.

“We had a big push into our offensive end, and we almost drew some penalty corners in the last minute,” McGillivray said. “But we came up short, which was too bad, but a good effort was there at the end.”

Despite the last-minute flurry, Northeastern’s defense was strong throughout the match, keeping the Harvard offense out of the zone and helping its attack outshoot the Crimson, 33-8, for the game.

It was quite a feat that Harvard remained so close throughout.

“[The Huskies] did a good job of blocking the circle limiting our scoring chances, and [Tassopoulos] had an unbelievable game—that is why we limited them to one goal,” Dickson said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t get it into the circle more.”

Harvard will look to rally next weekend and perform better in a conference matchup at Cornell. But first, the Crimson will look at its mistakes against Northeastern and try to fix them.

“We came out strong, and overall, we played really well,” McGillivray said. “A great opponent in Northeastern, and we always match up really well against them, especially this year.

“Our style is really similar to theirs, so we were able to match up really nicely with their players. We just needed more shots and more corners so we could score a goal.

—Staff writer Cameron Dowd can be reached at camerondowd14@college.harvard.edu.