Trip Down to Tobacco Road Ends in Loss

Sunday was a blue day for the Harvard field hockey team.

The Crimson (0-9, 0-2 Ivy) met no southern hospitality when it arrived at the No. 4 Blue Devils’ (8-3) North Carolina home turf. With the greatest offensive showing of any Harvard opponent thus far, Duke defeated the Crimson 5-2, asserting its position as the nation’s fourth-ranked team.

“It was a great opportunity for us as a team,” junior defender Devon Shapiro said. “We really just tried to concentrate on ourselves.”

The Blue Devils’ senior midfielder Amy Stopford led the Duke charge with a hat trick.

Harvard was able to hold off the Blue Devils for the first 11 minutes of the game, thanks to the continued defensive adroitness of sophomore goalie Kelly Knoche.

After a pair of close shots, Duke managed to sneak one between the pipes and gain the 1-0 advantage.

Only three minutes later the Blue Devils turned up the heat. Stopford collected the ball during a penalty corner and banged in Duke’s second goal.

The Crimson earned its own penalty corner in the last third of the period, when Shapiro netted her second goal of the season. A beautifully executed stickstop by junior Jana Berglund allowed her to seek out Shapiro’s anxious stick.

“I scored off of a corner and it was just a straight shot on net,” Shapiro said.

With the Blue Devils’ lead reduced to a single goal, it seemed as if Harvard might survive the fury of Hell’s kitchen. The Crimson may have been sweating, but it was not ready to be served.

However, the Crimson goal only served to light a fire under Duke.

Stopford pounded the ball into the cage again, and a fellow Blue Devil followed her lead, scoring the fourth and final Duke goal in the half.

The Blue Devils tried to push a fifth shot over the line with the clock racing toward halftime.

Senior defensive back Jennifer DeAngelis first denied Duke’s ambitions with a diving save across the goal line to clear the ball.

Knoche did her part in the cage, laying out to reject a breakaway shot with only seconds left and tallying six saves in the half.

The Harvard defense and the 15-minute intermission seemed to quell the Blue Devils’ onslaught.

It was not until 20 minutes into the second period that Duke would again find the Crimson net, putting the home team up 5-1 with Stopfords’ third of three.

Knoche nearly stuffed the shot, but the ball took an unfriendly bounce past her and into the roof of the goal for another tally.

Down to its final five minutes, Harvard stepped up its attack. Sophomore Francine Polet was able to sneak a pass behind the poised Blue Devil defense and connect with her sophomore teammate Tami Jafar.

The Duke goaltender rushed Jafar, who dodged the goalie’s desperate spread-eagle.

“I think there was a definite turn in the second half in terms of our play,” Jafar said. “Nobody was willing to sit back and give up. I think because of that general attitude and momentum we kept fighting for breaks during the second half.”

Knoche complemented the offensive surge by earning 14 of her 20 saves in the second half, proving her status as the second-best goalie in the Ivy League and sixteenth-best in the national statistical rankings.

After losing one-goal contests against Connecticut and Providence, then-ranked No. 10 and 15, respectively, the Crimson fell for a third time yesterday against a nationally ranked opponent.

Harvard will begin a four-game homestand Wednesday against Northeastern.

“We are in a great place as a team,” Shapiro said. “We have been improving and we are still in the running for the Ivy League.”

—Staff writer Gabriel M. Velez contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Courtney M. Petrouski an be reached at petrousk@fas.harvad.edu.