Harvard Revamps Weekend Strategy

If all else fails, Harvard women’s water polo can rely on the element of surprise to help it pull an upset this weekend at the Collegiate Water Polo Association Women’s Eastern Championships.

The Crimson (15-13, 2-2 CWPA) enters the Bloomington, Ind., tournament as the sixth seed. The University of Indiana will host the CWPA Championships, which start today and continue into the weekend.

But the team looks to finish much higher than that, catching its opponents off-guard with a whole new set of recently-implemented plays and formations.

“We tried to create plays that the teams haven’t seen yet,” junior attacker Shannon Purcell said. “We’re going to surprise people with our new 6-on-5 and our new defense. Hopefully, they won’t really know what to do with that, and that will give us the upper hand.”

Still, Harvard will need more than the element of surprise to upset the tournament.

No. 6 Michigan, No. 12 Hartwick, and No. 13 Indiana will all join the Crimson at Eastern Championships to compete for the title and an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Of the 11 teams competing at the tournament, Harvard has faced all but three of them earlier this season and is 5-6 this year against the competitors that will be represented at Eastern Championships.

The Crimson will play three or four games this weekend, beginning this morning with eleventh-seeded Gannon (9-16, 0-5 CWPA), one of the few teams in the field Harvard has not yet faced this season.

Crimson coach Ted Minnis said he has not done much scouting on Harvard’s first-round competitors, but he aims to shut down the Golden Knights’ two primary attackers, juniors Colleen Harriger and Molly Andrews, who have a combined total of over 100 goals for the season.

“I don’t know much about Gannon,” Minnis said. “We’ve come in with the mindset that we’re going to do what we do to start the game, and then we’ll adjust from there.”

The Golden Knights’ low seeding and dismal record—they are 0-8 against teams represented in the tournament—make it tempting for the Crimson to overlook its opponent, according to junior goalie Laurel McCarthy. But she stresses the importance of giving equal weight to each game, given Harvard’s past.

“We will need to stay completely mentally in the game all four quarters,” McCarthy said. “Sometimes, if we get up on teams, we let them sneak back into games. If we don’t get comfortable, we’re not going to let anyone back into a game with us.”

Should the Crimson win this morning in the first round of play, they are slated to face the third-seeded Hoosiers, who beat Harvard, 14-8, only two weeks ago.

Citing exhaustion following a busy week of competition, many of the Crimson players believe a second shot at the hosts would be a much closer competition than the first.

“When we played Indiana it was at the end of [a] long weekend, and even then, we played with them,” McCarthy said. “I think they will be very confident. They’re playing at home, and they already beat us, [so] I think they’re looking past us. I don’t think any one of us is focusing on that last loss.”

According to Minnis, aside from improving its transition defense, minimizing errors will be a crucial change for Harvard in this rematch.

“They’re No. 13 in the country, and that’s what good teams do—they capitalize on your mistakes,” Minnis said.

At this point last season, the Crimson headed into Eastern Championships seeded seventh and finished eighth.

Harvard views this year’s higher seeding as indication of its success so far this season.

“It shows how much improvement we’re making as a program,” said Purcell, who leads the team with 43 assists. “We’ll continue to improve as time goes on, but this weekend, we have to come out with intensity and play at our level. If we can do that...I think we’ll be unstoppable.”

—Staff writer Patrick Galvin can be reached at pgalvin@college.harvard.edu.