Ups And Downs Of A Life Aquatic

Playing 32 minutes of water polo is a lot. Add on eleven minutes of gut-wrenching sudden-death overtime, and it begins to seem like an eternity.

Even before I hopped into the water last Saturday night, I could tell that it was not going to be your average Harvard men’s varsity water polo game.

We had fallen to Fordham earlier in the day in our first conference game of the season and were looking to bounce back in what seemed to be a do-or-die match-up against the Gaels of Iona College.

We knew that an 0-2 start to conference play would all but doom us to the bottom half of the division. Looking around the locker room, I sensed a certain energy in the room, a feeling of urgency that wasn’t normally there.

Iona scored first, and memories of the morning’s game flashed in my mind. Would we just roll over and let the Gaels take this one?

But we fought back, tying the score at one on an extra-man goal by senior Alex Thompson.

The game went back and forth, yet the Gaels proved stronger over the first three periods, holding an 8-5 lead going into the fourth.

When we came over to the bench after the third quarter, our coach Ted Minnis had just one thing to tell us.

“Three-goal deficit? This is nothing,” he said. “You guys came back from five last week.”

Our offense stepped up to the plate in a big way during the final period. We scored two quick goals, and after an Iona score that extended its lead to 9-7, junior Mike Katzer powered the ball into the back of the net, cutting the deficit to one.

After a strong defensive stand, I ended up with the ball, and dropped it in to captain Bret Voith right in front of the goal. He rose up out of the water and tied the game with a shot that rocketed into the far side of the cage.

In water polo, overtime consists of two three-minute periods, and if necessary, as many three-minute periods of sudden death as needed to have a winner.

The first overtime period was scoreless, and with 30 seconds left in the second overtime, Iona called a time-out.

Its goalie came out to half-pool to pass the ball, and on the referee’s whistle, he threw it long into the hands of one of our players, who then passed the ball back to our junior goalkeeper, Alex Popp.

From the bench, I could see Alex holding the ball and eyeing the other goal, which had been left open after the opposing goalie had come out to half-pool.

“Don’t shoot, Alex; please don’t shoot,” were the only thoughts going through my mind. Just as I looked away for a second, I saw the ball flying towards the other goal, and to the amazement of everyone on the bench (and in the stands), it went in!

The entire bench went crazy—we couldn’t believe that our goalie had just scored. I thought for sure that the game was just about wrapped up, since there were only 18 seconds remaining.

But Iona’s relentlessness paid off, and the Gaels pushed down the pool and scored only 10 seconds later. Talk about a letdown.

In the first sudden-death period, as the shot clock was winding down, junior Kevin DiSilvestro passed the ball over to Voith in front of the goal in a last-ditch attempt to make something out of a possession that seemed to be amounting to nothing.

Voith went up to grab the ball and was pulled down by the opposing player, and the referee awarded our team with a penalty shot. The opposing coach went absolutely ballistic, screaming, “A five-meter? You’re going to give him a five-meter for THAT?”

The referee gave the coach a red card, and a security officer came down and escorted him out of the pool. Since Iona didn’t travel with an assistant coach, its bus driver came down and took over coaching duties for the remainder of the game.

In water polo, a penalty shot is similar to those in soccer, where a player is given the chance to take a undefended shot from a line only five meters away from the goal.

I have a custom of swimming to the other side of the pool and facing our goalkeeper when one of my teammates shoots a penalty shot. Maybe it’s superstition, but for whatever reason, I just cannot watch my team take penalty shots.

Voith lined up in front of the cage with the ball, and with my back to him, I heard the referee’s whistle. Then a loud clink. Iron. No goal.

The first sudden death ended with the same score with which it had begun. The second period of sudden death, which was the fourth overtime period of the game, started just as uneventfully as the last had finished. With just under a minute remaining, an Iona player made a seemingly harmless pass into a player in front of the cage, and…I saw the shot hit the netting in the back of the goal, and my mind just went blank.

We had lost. Emotionless, we shook hands with the other team, and I found myself just walking around the deck, as if I was waiting to start the next quarter of play. It couldn’t believe that it was over, just like that.

—Staff writer Evan J. Zepfel can be reached at ezepfel@fas.harvard.edu.