Harvard Crimson fans have a busy weekend, with many games happening at home and on the road.
The men’s soccer squad faces off against Yale at home in a conference match tomorrow afternoon. Currently, the Crimson stands at 2-3-3, but the team is winless in its last six games. The last two wins Harvard pulled out came in its opening matches against Stanford and Massachusetts. But the Bulldogs are 1-7-1 this season, and the last meeting between the rivals saw the Crimson taking the match in double overtime, 1-0.
The women’s soccer team also takes on Yale at home tomorrow. The squad is looking for its first conference win after losing to Penn in its first and only Ivy matchup. Currently, the women stand at 3-4-1, but they won their last match against Massachusetts, 3-2. As for its rivalry with the Bulldogs, Harvard has won the last two meetings, including a 3-2 victory at Yale last season.
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Each Thursday, The Crimson will compile a series of unique statistics about Harvard's sports scene. Welcome to the Magic of Numbers—without the problem sets. We'll do the math for you.
LOOKING AHEAD: FOOTBALL
18 — Number of points scored by Harvard last year in a 35-18 loss to Lafayette. The Crimson will take on the Leopards this Saturday at noon in Easton, PA.
14 — Number of points scored by Harvard in its loss to Brown last week.
2 — Number of overtimes played between Lafayette and Princeton last week. The Tigers eventually prevailed 36-33, handing the Leopards its third loss of the season.
1 — Win Lafayette head coach Frank Tavani has against Harvard. In his eleventh season, he holds a 1-8 record all-time against the Crimson.
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Looking for a cool alternative to the usual Sunday-morning college routine of hangovers, homework, and “veritaffles?” This weekend you have a great one. On Oct. 3, you can join Radcliffe crew in Boston’s first ever Jog for Jill, a 5k walk/run in memory of Jill Costello.
As many of you may have heard from this Crimson column last week Jill was a non-smoker and coxswain on the Cal rowing team who lost her battle against lung cancer this past June. She dedicated herself to raising money for cancer research in the last year of her life and, just months before passing away, led her team to a second-place finish at the NCAA Championships. The first Jog for Jill took place in San Francisco two weeks ago and raised over $350,000 for the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation.
The Boston-area Jog for Jill event to benefit lung cancer research will kick off this Sunday at Artesani Park in Brighton, MA. Registration begins at 7:30 a.m. and the “jogging” itself kicks off at 9, but the event promises to be a full morning filled with fun and exercise, while of course promoting lung cancer awareness and raising money for the cause.
Members of Radcliffe crew will be participating in some way or another this weekend. So far, the heavyweight and lightweight teams have combined to raise $11,716 for the BJALCF, more than doubling their initial donation goal. Many Radcliffe rowers and other Crimson athletes also plan to participate in the run itself this Sunday. Check this out for more details, especially if you want to get involved either through donation, as a runner, or both.
Every fall, the media has its annual love affair with football, and action on the gridiron dominates coverage from coast to coast. With men’s soccer opening the year as the highest-ranked fall team, finding gender balance in our sports coverage can be even more difficult. But the women of the Ivy League are fighting back, notching noteworthy accomplishments from the pitch to the track. So gather ’round the water cooler folks, and let’s take a look at what’s happening in the Ivy League this week.
Harvard’s highest honor this week did not go to an athlete at all, but rather to an administrator for a lifetime of devotion to sports. The Crimson’s Patricia Henry, the athletic department’s senior associate director and founder of the Harvard Radcliffe Foundation for Women’s Athletics, received the ECAC Katherine Lay award yesterday for her work over the past 30 years. The award is reserved for “someone of demonstrated leadership ability, a proponent of women's issues, and a role model for women coaches and administrators.” Henry’s inspirational work has paved the way for many of Harvard’s female athletes and those all across the country.
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Winning football games is undoubtedly a product of practice, discipline, scouting, and skill, but after traveling to Brown for the game last weekend, I have a new appreciation for another powerful contributor to strong play: fandom. Under the temporary lights of Brown Stadium, 17,360 fans filled the seats, creating an atmosphere that felt very collegiatea—a rare feat in Ivy League athletics.
“I can’t tell you what it meant to have so many people in the stands,” Bears coach Phil Estes said. “To turn around and see what we saw...[It] really got the adrenaline going, and I think the team fed off of that.”
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