Laxwomen stunned by Loyola in overtime, 10-9

The Harvard women's lacrosse team went to the track yesterday and lost its shirts.

Harvard traveled to Baltimore, Md. yesterday to play Loyola, but the Lady Greyhounds beat the odds to race past the Crimson, 10-9, in overtime.

The Crimson, ranked first in the nation going into the contest, had a chance at a blowout, but let the fifth-ranked Lady Greyhounds (9-1) climb back into the game. Harvard (8-1 overall, 3-0 Ivy) jumped out to 4-0 lead in the first five minutes, but then gave up four ananswered goals.

"We shut down their settled offense pretty well, but their fast break was running by us," Co-captain Sarah Leary said.

"Those first minutes were the best we played," said Harvard Coach Carole Kleinfelder. "After that, We opened the door, and they never looked back."

The remainder of the first half was a see-saw battle for the lead, the with Loyola taking a 7-6 lead into the half.

"We gave them a chance to come back, and they did," Leary said. "Their fast break was running, and they had a lot of the three-on-one and three-on-two situations which they capitalized on."

The game was played on artificial turf, but the Kleinfelder was quick to downplay its effects on the game.

"They were simply faster than we were, especially in the midfield," Kleinfelder said.

Speed, however, wasn't the only problem.

"We think we're playing hard, but we're not. We need that little extra spark," Kleinfelder said. "Right now we aren't overconfident, but underconfident, and the way to change that is to play harder in practice and games. Today they simply wanted it more than we did."

Harvard scored the first two goals of the second half to take an 8-7 lead, but Loyola stifled the run quickly.

"We had a lot of errors, the majority of them our own mistakes and they took advantage of every mistake we made," said Kleinfelder.

Loyola senior Tara Kramer scored one of her four goals with 12:01 remaining to knot the game at eight, but Harvard senior Buffy Hansen broke the tie with a goal at 5:56 left to put the Crimson ahead again, 9-8.

Just when Harvard thought it could relax, Kramer scored again with 1:55 remaining in regular play to tie the game at nine. Harvard was unable to score, and the game was sent to overtime.

Harvard almost gained an advantage in the first of the two three minute overtime periods, but a goal by sophomore Emily Buxton was called back on a crease violation. Loyola scored again in the same frame and stalled out the remainder of the game.

The Crimson spent considerable time in practice working on its settled offense over the last two weeks, but with little apparent result.

"Our attack as a whole did not play well. Our settled offense was nonexistent," Kleinfelder lamented.

Kleinfelder was quick to laud Leary's 15-save effort in the net.

"Sarah kept us in the game. She was the only player who had a really good game," Kleinfelder said.

"We hopefully will learn a lot from this game. We lost the ball too many times, and they capitalized well," Leary said.

LOYOLA, 10-9, OT Harvard  6  3  0  0  --  9 Loyola  7  2  1  0  --  10

G:Harvard--Berkery (3), Gaffney (2), Hansen (2), Winters (1), Downing (1); Loyola--Kramer (4), Anderson (3), Roberts (1), McGuigan (1), Dial (1). A:Harvard--Seidel (1); Loyola--Anderson (1), Roberts (1). S:Harvard--Leary (15); Loyola-Ohrin (15).