Women's Soccer Fights Yale to a Draw

The last time the Harvard women’s soccer team faced Yale at home, it took until the 95th minute for the Crimson to score. In the 94th minute of this contest, Harvard looked like it might repeat history. Sophomore forward Midge Purce delivered a cross into the box that found junior forward Brooke Dickens’ head. But the Bulldogs’ senior goalkeeper Elise Wilcox had other plans.

In its second consecutive double-overtime game, the Crimson drew the same result, a scoreless tie. Harvard (6-2-2, 1-0-1 Ivy) battled with Yale (5-3-1, 0-1-1) for 110 minutes in the rain, with both sides unable to convert any of its respective 14 shots.

“I thought that we gave 100 percent effort,” senior goalkeeper Cheta Emba said. “We might not have been connecting and putting together things the way that we wanted to, but the heart was there, and we laid it all out on the field.”

The Crimson started off slow, letting the Bulldogs dictate the pace of the game in the first half.

“We just seemed to be a step off in the first half,” Harvard coach Ray Leone said. “Even though there were no goals in the first half, it seemed like we were trying to catch up.”

Midway through the first half, Yale threatened with a string of three corner kicks in a three-minute time frame. Two of the three corners off the foot of senior forward Melissa Gavin found the head of senior defender Muriel Battaglia, but neither got past the Harvard defense.

Although Yale took seven shots in the first half, the Bulldogs failed to put any of them on goal. Strong pressure from the Crimson defense kept Yale’s offense from capitalizing on its possession advantage early in the game.

For Harvard’s defense, this stellar performance was nothing new. Anchored by sophomore Bailey Gary and junior Alika Keene, the Crimson’s back line has recorded seven shutouts in ten games this season.

“The back line’s been incredible,” Emba said. “They have just been working on communication and covering each other and not giving up any easy balls. When they do give up unfortunate plays, they grind it out and get the ball back on our attacking side of the field.”

The Bulldogs came out strong in the second half. Yale’s Battaglia was again central to the action. After her header shot was blocked in the first minute of the half, Battaglia followed up three minutes later with a shot from the left side that was cleared away just inches from the goal line.

As the rain started to pick up, the pace of the game picked up with it.

Harvard put together one of its best scoring opportunities midway through the second half when senior midfielder Bethany Kanten delivered a ball into the box. Teammate Laura Aguilar got her head on it, but her shot missed wide.

Battaglia threatened again near the end of regulation time. With just under seven minutes left in the game, she got her head on a corner, but her shot deflected off the top crossbar. Sophomore goalkeeper Lizzie Durack went down with an injury during the play, forcing Emba to enter the game in its final minutes.

“I was trying to just calm down and get ready,” Emba said. “I was thinking about Lizzie and hoping she was fine, but also trying to hold myself accountable so I could be ready to serve my team in the way that they needed in the last few minutes of the game.”

Emba did just that. She recorded a pair of diving saves in overtime that kept the Bulldogs off the scoreboard and brought her season total to 19.

The Crimson offense turned it on in the second overtime. Junior midfielder Haley Washburn and freshman defender Mia Bladin each had a pair of shots in the final ten-minute period, but none found the back of the net.

“It was about as fairly fought as an archrival game could be,” Leone said. “It could’ve gone either way.”

—Staff writer Eileen Storey can be reached at eileen.storey@thecrimson.com.