W. Lax Season Turns Program Around

With a 9-4 home loss to No. 13 Dartmouth on April 17, the Harvard women’s lacrosse team dropped to 0-4 in the Ivy League. At that point, the Crimson had scored just 14 goals over its previous three games and looked to be going nowhere fast.

Less than one month later, Harvard (9-7, 2-4 Ivy League) claimed the ECAC championship with a dramatic 9-8 win at No. 18 Johns Hopkins.

Time flies when you’re turning your season around.

“[Today’s] very bittersweet,” said co-captain Hilary Walton after the Hopkins win. “We had a sort of rocky four years and this is the best way to end it.”

Most of that rockiness came before Harvard earned its first league win of the season with a 16-11 triumph at Columbia on April 20. That victory came thanks in large part to an amazing seven-goal performance by junior Katie Shaughnessy.

The very next day, eight different players scored for the Crimson in an 11-2 rout of California that snapped a two-game home losing skid.

The momentum that Harvard gained from those wins propelled the Crimson to a huge nonconference victory over No. 20 New Hampshire at Jordan Field on April 24. Suddenly, the Crimson found itself riding a three-game winning streak heading into an Ivy showdown with No. 6 Cornell.

For much of that game, it looked as if Harvard would continue its winning ways. The Crimson led Cornell—a team that later advanced all the way to the NCAA semifinals—by a 7-4 margin at halftime and was up 8-5 with 16 minutes to play.

But the Big Red stormed back, scoring four unanswered goals to win, 9-8.

“This was a heartbreaker,” said Harvard Coach Carole Kleinfelder after the game. “We could have won this game.”

With the loss, the Crimson’s record slipped back to 7-7, meaning it needed a win in its final regular season game against Brown in order to finish above the .500 mark—something Harvard hadn’t done since 1996—and qualify for the ECAC championship.

The Bears gave the Crimson everything it could handle and added to the drama by forcing two overtimes. But Harvard sophomore Jen Brooks recorded her second hat trick of the season, scoring once in each of the extra frames to give her team a 12-11 victory.

“[Brooks’ heroics were] just characteristic of our attackers all season,” said senior attacker Melissa Christino. “People step up at different moments and it makes all the difference in the world.”

Brooks had the hot hand once again in the ECAC title game, as she notched a hat trick for the second consecutive game while her classmate, goaltender Laura Mancini, capped off a stellar spring by making a career-high 15 saves.

With the ECAC trophy in tow, several of Harvard’s players earned postseason accolades of their own, including a Second Team All-America selection.

Erin Kutner, a senior defender, is the Crimson’s highest All-America pick since Carrie Shumway ’96 made the first team in her final season. Since Shumway, the only Harvard player to be named to an All-American team had been Alli Harper ’01.

Kutner and Shaughnessy earned Second Team All-Ivy honors, while senior Heather Gotha received honorable mention.

WOMEN'S LACROSSE

RECORD 9-7 (2-5 Ivy, 6th place)

COACH Carole Kleinfelder

CAPTAINS Hilary Walton, Heather Hussey

HIGHLIGHTS The Crimson topped No. 18 Johns Hopkins to win the ECAC title. The winning season was Harvard’s first since 1996. Senior defender Erin Kutner earned Second Team All-American honors.