W. Soccer Makes NCAAs But Falters in Ivy Play

The Harvard women’s soccer team ended the 2001 season with its fifth straight trip to the second round of NCAAs, a streak only 10 other programs in the country have matched. But considering that the Crimson placed just fourth in its league for the second straight season after being ranked as high as No. 12 nationally each year, some frustration was inevitable.

The Crimson (11-6, 4-3 Ivy) started the year 8-1 and climbed to the top of the Northeast rankings with wins over nationally-ranked UMass and Marquette and perennial tournament entries Boston College and Boston University. But all the momentum from the fast start quickly fell flat as Princeton, Dartmouth and Penn each knocked off the Crimson at Ohiri Field and ultimately split the league title three ways.

The collapse was reminiscent of a year before, when the team started 10-2 but dropped its last five. Harvard Coach Tim Wheaton took this series of losses harder and typically couldn’t offer postgame explanations beyond the nugget he offered up after the Dartmouth loss: “We didn’t play the way we know how to play.”

The 3-1 loss to Penn that closed out the regular season was particularly deflating, as Ivy Rookie of the Year Katy Cross punished the Crimson with three goals by exploiting a flu-ridden Harvard backfield.

Two days later, the Crimson solemnly received its NCAA assignment. Its postseason results—a 1-0 quadruple-overtime, 137-minute marathon victory over Hartford and a 1-0 defeat at perennial eastern power UConn in round two—gave some solace to the dismal conclusion to the Ivy season.

“I think we had some great moments early [in the season], but I think we lost focus,” Wheaton said after his team’s elimination. “We forgot the work that goes into winning. One of our real objectives this weekend was to take advantage of that second chance that the NCAA provides, not so much by winning— which is nice—but by playing the way we know we want to play, and we did that these last two games.”

“We turned it around after those [Ivy] losses,” said co-captain Caitlin Costello, who bounced back from injury to be Harvard’s leading goal-scorer this season. “We went out in style. We may have lost the game [to UConn], but it was not easy for them to win. We did everything we could.”

The highest honors in the offseason went to sophomore midfielder Katie Westfall, who earned NSCAA Third Team All-American honors and became the school’s first All-American since Emily Stauffer ’98-’99, who is now in the WUSA.

Westfall, who Costello calls the team’s “general on the field,” scored just two goals—four fewer than her freshman-year total—but she had seven assists and set up three of the team’s biggest goals of the season.

The first stellar setup came in Harvard’s 1-0 double overtime win over Yale early in the season. As the Eli goalkeeper was organizing a several-player wall inside the box, Westfall rushed the restart and softly lobbed the free kick over the defenders. Junior forward Beth Totman won the ensuing race to the ball and pushed it into daylight for the game-winner.

Then, in Harvard’s 1-0 regular-season victory over Hartford, Westfall took advantage of a Hawk team that misinterpreted a play to be offsides, finding a wide-open Totman for the game-winner. Finally, in the NCAA win over Hartford, Westfall hit junior Joey Yenne inside the 18 with a pass from midfield. Yenne proceeded to set up Totman for the finish in the 138th minute.

Sophomore Caitlin Fisher was Harvard’s other First Team All-Ivy honoree. Fisher made the switch from the midfield to the backfield this year and become the team’s most outstanding defender, often single-handedly stopping opposing teams’ scoring runs, especially in the postseason.

Freshman back Liza Barber, the only regular frosh starter on the team, earned Second Team All-Ivy honors. Besides being a consistent force in the backfield, she had dazzling headers for goals against Marquette and Cornell.

Yenne was noticeably Harvard’s lone junior honoree on the All-Ivy Second Team. The Harvard Class of 2003, which was ranked No. 7 nationally in the Soccer Buzz recruiting rankings three years ago, backed up that lofty hype by being instrumental to a team that rose to No. 7 in the national rankings in 1999. But since that undefeated Ivy season the class’ results have been full of disappointment.

How the once-touted class—now seniors—will respond to Wheaton in the coming months is the great unanswered question of next season.

WOMEN'S SOCCER

RECORD 11-6 (4-3 Ivy, 4th place)

COACH Tim Wheaton

Captains Caitlin Costello, Colleen Moore

Highlights 1-0 (4 OT) win over Hartford in first round of NCAAs leads Harvard to fifth straight second round appearance. Sophomore midfielder Katie Westfall earns Third Team All-American honors.