A Little Respect

Don't underestimate the seriousness of the Harvard men's lacrosse team's disturbing 14-13 upset loss to Dartmouth last Saturday. Dartmouth is and has been for some time an inferior team to Harvard, and the Crimson cannot afford to throw away easy wins to a less skilled team like Dartmouth.

"[This loss] is very shocking..." junior midfielder Owen Leary said. "We were really hoping to finish the season 5-1 in the Ivies...I'm shocked right now, I can't believe it happened."

One of the reasons Saturday's loss is so upsetting is because the Harvard lacrosse program has been undergoing a promising upward trend in the 1990s, a trend that culminated in reaching the quarterfinals of last year's NCAA tournament. Losing to Dartmouth would have been unthinkable last year, no matter how close the game actually was. The Crimson had loftier goals back then, such as taking on Hofstra and the University of Virginia in the NCAAs.

But that was then and this is now. And this is now is not looking good. A great lacrosse team upsets teams like Princeton and Virginia. A good team has no trouble beating Ivy League cellar dwellers like Dartmouth. But the sign of a once-good team that could be about to embark on an alarming decline is a team that little by little starts losing to inferior opponents. And that's true in almost all sports.

That's why each player on the men's lacrosse team should be worried. Real worried. Last year no one could stop talking about how great Harvard lacrosse was. When I talked to players and coaches from top lacrosse teams last year, they almost always told me how impressed they were with Harvard's program.

We already have a coach, Scott Anderson, who has proven he knows how to win and does an excellent job recruiting talent. So unless this year's players want to be responsible for sending a program that was shaping up to be a prize of Harvard athletics into the toilet, we cannot afford any more embarrassing losses like Saturday.

Some people might say that I'm getting too worked up over one loss to what was already a lost season in respect to Harvard making the NCAAs this year. But one of the things that was the most disturbing about Saturday's game was the fact that Harvard's players did not seem upset enough about losing to Dartmouth.

After the game, players walked off the field with a kind of confused disbelief. But that seemed to be about the height of the emotional level all day. I'm not saying I expected to see wild, uncontrolled tempertantrums after the loss, but a little more reaction to such a stunning defeat would have been welcome.

My brother, Brian McEvoy, is on the Dartmouth team, and he told me that the Harvard players didn't seem that upset in the hand shaking line after the game. And two Harvard lacrosse parents said after the game, "Those guys just wanted it more than us today."

One of the reasons Harvard lost to Dartmouth is because from the opening whistle the Big Green came out with an enthusiasm that the Crimson could not match. Harvard is Dartmouth's biggest rival in lacrosse, even if the Crimson doesn't exactly return the favor.

So did the fact that Dartmouth looks forward to this game all season have anything to do with the loss?

"That they came out and played with effort and we didn't?" Anderson replied. "I don't know. We had an opportunity to go 5-1 in the league. That should be motivation enough...If [effort] was an advantage, they had it."

Losing the respect the Harvard lacrosse program has earned throughout the country should be motivation enough to never let a loss like Saturday's happen again.