W. Lax Goes From Valley to Peak

After the finals of the ECAC Tournament, the Harvard women's lacrosse team could be seen drinking champagne, definitely in the midst of a celebration.

It might be surprising to learn, then, that the team had just lost.

Or did it? Sure, the final score read Lehigh 11, Harvard 10. But in the Crimson's eyes, the team had lost a battle but won the war.

The amazing thing Harvard did was fight back from a five-game losing streak early in the season to win seven in a row, earning a record of 8-6 (3-3 Ivy) and a No. 12 spot in the NCAA poll.

Yes, a win over the Engineers in the title game of the auxiliary tournament would have been nice. But no, it didn't sour the sweet season all that much.

"I think that either way the season was a success," said senior attacker Erin Cleary, who was voted Honorable Mention All-Ivy. "I think definitely we would have wanted to go to 9-5, but we still drank champagne and still had a tailgate."

It all started amidst the snow of Boston College.

Thanks to Boston's normally horrid month of March, the Crimson's early season wasn't quite what it would have liked. Its only three games originally scheduled for March were B.C., UMass and then Princeton, but the contest against the Minutewomen was moved to May and the B.C. game was played literally minutes after plows shoved the snow to the side of Alumni Stadium.

What that did was leave the Crimson with only one very sloppy game before the beginning of its Ivy season. Against last year's runner-up in the NCAA Tournament, nonetheless.

The forthcoming 15-4 loss to the Tigers began the Crimson's dark part of the season--a five-game losing streak that almost spiraled Harvard into a never-ending row of losses.

A 9-8 defeat to unheralded Penn came next, and then a 14-7 loss at nationally-ranked Yale. Then Harvard faced the top two teams in the nation--No. 2 Loyola and No. 1 Maryland--and neither score was close (14-4 and 17-1).

All of a sudden, Harvard had a 1-5 record and was winless in three Ivy games. But that soon changed.

The game that started the turnaround was against Brown. Playing the Bears evenly in the first half, the Crimson switched from its zone defense to a man-to-man, which shut down the Brown attack. Harvard won, 10-7, and the season began to change.

Next, Harvard beat up on Cornell, 18-11, setting up a showdown at Dartmouth on the following Tuesday. By beating the Big Green, the Crimson would even its Ivy record and come within one game of a .500 record.

And just as in the Brown game, a second-half run put the game away, and goaltender Shana Barghouti came up with all the big saves in the 11-8 victory.

Then came three easy wins over non-league foes (Vermont, UNH and UMass), which game Harvard a more-than-respectable 7-5 record and an invitation to the ECAC Tournament.

Here, the winning streak died. After beating Brown in the first round, 15-8, thanks to a 12-3 first half, Harvard couldn't pull out the victory over Lehigh in the championship.

But the damper that the loss put on the season was pretty small.

"I think that to get to the end result--even though we lost five games in a row--showed how none of us gave up," junior co-captain Daphne Clark said. "To win seven games in a row was just a huge accomplishment for us."

Driving the turnaround was the play of Barghouti, a senior who decided to come back for a fifth year after the season ended. Her goaltending throttled Dartmouth and Brown in the regular season, which were Harvard's two most important wins of the year.

Also deserving note were senior Maria Hennessey, who led Harvard with 37 goals, and co-captain Megan Hall with 22 goals, 16 assists. Senior defenseman Carrie Shumway, meanwhile, was the Crimson's only First-Team All-Ivy selection.

"I think that the seniors pulled it all together," Clark said. "It was obvious that everyone cared."

Harvard Sports Stats 1995-96

Women's Lacrosse

Records: 8-6, 3-3 Ivy

Ivy Finish: Third (tie)

Head Coach: Carole Kleinfelder

Captains: Megan Hall '96, Daphne Clark '97

Other Key Players: Carrie Shumway '96, Maria Hennessey '96, Erin Cleary '96, Shana Barghouti '96-'97