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 Hoisting the Ivy League trophy for the first time in a decade, Harvard gridders celebrate a 17-7 victory at Yale. Photograph by Jon Chase |
In the eyes of the Almighty, however, Harvard's endurance had to trump Yale's. Yale last had a winning football team in 1991. Until the season just past, Harvard hadn't had one since 1987. Winless in eight of nine games, Yale played hard when the old rivals met at New Haven on November 22. But swiftness and strength have lifted Harvard from the Ivy League depths. Yale took a 17-7 defeat, and Harvard took the Ivy championship for the first time in a decade.
 The Yale game was less than two minutes old when sophomore halfback Chris Menick broke a Harvard record by scoring his fourteenth touchdown of the season. Menick rushed for 167 yards at Yale Bowl, setting a single-season record of 1,267 yards.  Junior defensive back Joe Weidle blocks a 22-yard field goal try by Murawczyk, Yale's freshman kicking specialist.  End Tim Fleiszer (34) and tackle Jason Hughes (95) close in on Walland, the Yale quarterback. Crimson defenders sacked him seven times. Fleiszer and Hughes, both seniors, were among five Harvard players named to the All-Ivy first team.  |
Harvard (7-0, 9-1 overall) had not gone unbeaten and untied in Ivy play since the league was formalized in 1956. No Crimson team had won nine games in a season since 1919, when Harvard made its first and last Rose Bowl appearance.
The Ivy title is Harvard's ninth. Crimson teams were the co-champions in 1961, 1966, 1968, 1974, 1982, and 1983, winning outright titles in 1975, 1987, and 1997. Renewed success has been long in coming. In the most protracted dry spell in Harvard football annals, the Crimson teams of 1988-96 had a cumulative won-lost-tied record of 32-57-1. (Yale was 41-48-1 in those years.) Arriving from the University of Cincinnati to succeed the retiring Joe Restic after the 1993 season, head coach Tim Murphy planned a four-year rebuilding program. In his first three seasons, Murphy's teams had records of 4-6, 2-8, and 4-6. "The second year was the dark time," says Murphy. "We were last in total offense, last in defense, and last in the league." Only a last-minute touchdown by the heroic Eion Hu '97 saved Harvard from its first winless Ivy campaign, as the 1995 team nipped Yale, 22-21, with 29 seconds to play.
"Last year," says Murphy, "we made the transition from being a poor team to being a very scrappy, competitive team. We just couldn't win the close ones."
Early morning runs, intensive strength and conditioning workouts, and long practices are central to Murphy's program. So is defensive superiority. "Offense is sexy," Murphy has said, "but defense wins championships. I start by putting our best athletes on defense." This year's team was a felicitous blend: 11 returning defensive starters, an experienced offensive line, and plenty of talented backs and receivers.
The season began with a 45-7 rout of Columbia. Sophomore Rich Linden, who won the starting quarterback's job in his freshman year, passed for three touchdowns and ran for another. Harvard lost to Bucknell in the second of three nonleague contests, but a 34-9 win over Cornell--Harvard's first defeat of the Big Red since 1985--and a 14-12 white-knuckler against Princeton suggested that this Crimson team was a legitimate title contender.
Princeton would be the only team to keep Harvard's offense out of the end zone. In the season's tensest game, played in a driving rainstorm, sophomore halfback Chris Menick gained 132 yards, setting a Harvard record with 42 carries. The game's pivotal figure turned out to be sophomore punter and place-kicker Mike Giampaolo, who booted four field goals. The last two-- a wobbler from 21 yards out, and a career-best 43-yarder-- erased a 12-8 Princeton lead in the game's waning minutes.
In a showdown for first place in the Ivy standings, Harvard pinned a 24-0 defeat on a Dartmouth team that had won 15 consecutive Ivy games. Terence Patterson, a sophomore flanker with a flair for acrobatic catches, pulled in 11 of Linden's passes--two for touchdowns--and scored on a dazzling 62-yard reverse. The defense held Dartmouth to minus 3 yards rushing and intercepted five passes. The Green had not been held scoreless since 1987, and hadn't been shut out by a Harvard football squad since 1941.
The Ivy race typically goes down to the wire, but William N. Wallace, the veteran football writer of the New York Times, saw the Dartmouth game as conclusive. Harvard, wrote Wallace, "outplayed and outscored the Big Green, the defending champion, with so much conviction that the new titan of the Ivies was validated. The victory left the Crimson alone in first place, with games remaining against Brown, Penn, and Yale. Harvard is so balanced, so deep and so talented it is difficult to imagine one of those three teams beating it."
 End Tim Fleiszer (34) aborting a pass by Penn quarterback Matt Rader. Rader was sacked four times in a 33-0 rout. Photograph by Jon Chase |
William N. Wallace is a man whose word you can take. Harvard fell behind Brown, 10-0, but rallied to win handily, 27-10. Penn, the preseason Ivy favorite, came to the Stadium with a four-game winning streak and a chance to force a tie for first place; Harvard clinched a share of the Ivy title by giving the Quakers a 33-0 shellacking. Linden passed for two touchdowns and ran for a third, but the defense made the play of the game. Trailing 14-0 late in the first half, Penn attempted a fourth-and-five screen pass to halfback Jim Finn at the line of scrimmage. Harvard safety Aron Natale knocked it out of his hands and into cornerback Glenn Jackson's. Jackson, a speedster, sprinted 73 yards for a touchdown. He also made a late-game interception, his sixth of the season. To Penn coach Al Bagnoli, the 33-0 blowout "was as thorough a domination as I've ever been involved in."
The final victim was Yale, a 20-point underdog when the teams squared off for the 114th game in the series. The Eli had lost all six Ivy games and were injury-ridden. Two linebackers and a receiver had been drafted as offensive backs. But there was a lot of fight in this patched-up outfit. It did not look like Yale's worst football team.
Harvard took the kickoff and went downfield in four plays. Only a minute and 40 seconds had elapsed when Menick went over from two yards out. "Too easy," said Murphy after the game. Yale steadied itself, and the teams played on an almost equal footing the rest of the way. The Blue lost a scoring chance when linebacker Joe Weidle blocked Mike Murawczyk's 22-yard field-goal try at the start of the second period. When Menick's high-velocity running put his team inside the Yale 20, Linden unloaded a pass to flanker Jared Chupaila at the goal line, extending the Harvard lead to 14-0. As the third period ended, a 41-yard Giampaolo field goal made it 17-0. Yale, buoyed by sophomore quarterback Joe Walland's passing and scrambling, continued to fight. Early in the final period Walland rifled an 18-yard pass to Ken Marschner, a six-foot-six flanker, who made a leaping one-handed catch in the end zone. The Elis were threatening again when time ran out. The win meant an outright title for Harvard and was the Crimson's third straight victory over Yale, a run that hasn't been equaled since 1967.
Giampaolo's field goal gave Harvard 301 points for the season, the most any Crimson team has scored since 1894. (That year's eleven ran up 334 points in 13 games, but lost to Yale and Penn.) The defense yielded just four touchdowns in its seven league games, and was implacable in the shutouts of Dartmouth and Penn, the strongest Ivy League teams on the schedule. Neither was allowed to come within field-goal range.
  Parental pride. Above: Grace, head coach Tim, and Molly Murphy. Below, the Jacksons: Cynthia, Glenn '99, and Clarence. Glenn led the defense with six interceptions this fall.Photographs by Jon Chase |
Linden threw for 2,099 yards and 16 touchdowns. At his best in long-yardage situations, he set Harvard records for pass completions (164) and total offense (2,308 yards). Though the last five games were played in raw, wet weather, Linden was unfazed, compiling a .526 completion average. Opposing quarterbacks in those games had a combined average of .377. With two more seasons ahead, Linden is likely to smash every Harvard passing record.
Picking up 167 yards in the Yale game, Menick finished with 1,267 yards rushing, breaking the Harvard record of 1,101 set in 1995 by Eion Hu. He was 470 yards ahead of the Ivy League's next-best ground-gainer, Penn's Jim Finn. With 14 touchdowns, Menick also effaced the single-season record of 13 set in 1991 by Mike Giardi '94. Only the great Charlie Brickley '15, who made field goals as well as touchdowns, has scored more points in a season (94, in 1912, to Menick's 84). "Menick knows how to hit the seams, bang it in there," says Yale's first-year coach, Jack Siedlecki. "He isn't big, but he runs like a big back. He's not the fastest back in the league, or the shiftiest. But he's the best back in the league. We've got to find one of those for ourselves."
Tidbits: The gate at The Game was announced as 26,264. That made it (a) the largest Ivy League crowd of the season, and (b) the smallest to see a Harvard-Yale game at Yale Bowl since 1942....Never before has Yale failed to win a single Ivy game. This squad's overall record of 1-9 matches that of the 1983 team as the poorest in school history. But the '83 team beat Princeton....Attendance at Harvard's home games averaged 6,600. Not enough for a title contender.
If only...: Harvard's sole loss was to Bucknell, 24-20. The Crimson held a 20-7 first-quarter lead, but couldn't keep it. Bucknell won 10 straight before a whacking by Colgate, 42-7, in its last game....Harvard set records for total yardage (623), plays (97), and first downs (33) in a 52-24 thrashing of Holy Cross, another Patriot League opponent. Defensive tackle Brendan Bibro, Harvard's captain, broke his foot in the game and was sidelined for the season. He still has a year of eligibility and will be back in 1998 as Harvard's first two-year captain.
Records galore: With 261 yards against Holy Cross and 201 at Brown, Menick became the first Harvard back to achieve two 200-yard rushing games in a career. Because he began the season as backup to junior Troy Jones, Menick did not start the first two games. Jones sprained an ankle in the second, a 35-30 win over Lehigh, and was lost for the season....Senior split end Colby Skelton's 127 career receptions eclipsed the record of 108 set by Pat McInally '75; his career yardage of 1,948 extended a record he set last year. Skelton also set punt-return records.... With 21 quarterback sacks in four seasons, senior defensive end Chris Smith also set a career record. He had six unassisted tackles against Yale.
Saturday's heroes: Sixteen seniors, coach Murphy's initial recruits, made their farewell appearances at the Stadium in the Penn game. "The seniors were the heart and soul of this game," said Murphy afterward. "The same qualities that got them into Harvard got them the championship."...Menick, who was voted the team's most valuable player, was one of five Crimson standouts named to the coaches' All-Ivy team. Also chosen were offensive tackle Matt Birk '98, defensive end Tim Fleiszer '98, defensive tackle Jason Hughes '98, and linebacker Isaiah Kacyvenski '00. The 220-pound Kacyvenski, who led the defense with 80 tackles, also lined up as a blocking back in the team's goal-line offense. On the All-Ivy second team were Linden, Patterson, Smith, and safety Jeff Compas '98, the first four-year starter in the history of Harvard football.
~ "Cleat"
 Forward Eugene Kinasewich '64, Ed.D. '81, in action against Yale at the Boston Garden in 1962. He was inducted into the Beanpot Tournament Hall of Fame in 1966. Photograph by Fred Kaplan |
This winter Harvard will again meet Brown twice on the ice, continuing the nation's oldest active college hockey rivalry. Furthermore, the Crimson men's hockey team is celebrating its centennial year in 1998. (Johns Hopkins and Yale are believed to have played the first game under hockey rules, in 1896.) The game with the puck seems to have caught on.
A century ago, the ice was a much different place. First, game venues were generally outdoors. Four forwards and two defensemen (called point and counter-point) skated in front of the goalie. Individual rushes were the norm, a logical consequence of the prohibition of forward passes. Substitutions were rare. From the beginning, there were thrilling moments, such as future U.S. Senator Leverett Saltonstall '14 scoring an overtime goal to beat Princeton and the legendary Hobey Baker in 1914.
Some of the sport's innovations began at Harvard--like the revolutionary concept, introduced by star player George Owen '23 and coach Larry Claflin, of substituting entire forward lines at once. This was the beginning of shift changes, a staple of play ever since. A different kind of innovation, the Beanpot Tournament, began in 1952 with a Crimson victory.
Since 1932, many Crimson icemen have reached Olympian heights. Director of athletics Bill Cleary '56, for example, helped the United States win a gold medal in 1960 at Squaw Valley, with teammates including brother Bob Cleary '58 and Bob McVey '58. Bill Cleary went on to coach Harvard's hockey program from 1971 to 1990. In 1979, the dedication of Bright Hockey Center featured an exhibition game that pitted Harvard against another U.S. squad that would take home Olympic gold in 1980. Between 1976 and 1994, every U.S. Olympic team included at least two Harvard players.
Before Bright there was Watson Rink; it opened on the same site in 1956 and provided the Crimson skaters with their first true home ice. (From 1910 to 1955 Harvard played at the Boston Arena, which is now Northeastern's Matthews Arena.) "I can remember walking from Dillon to Watson in freezing cold weather. I relish the fact that we had that type of an atmosphere," says three-time all-American Joe Cavanagh '71. "Hockey is a cold, tough game, and Watson was kind of a cold, tough place. It was simple, uncomplicated--there was nothing to do but put on your skates and go out there."
A few, in fact, have gone out there and become the best in the land. Intercollegiate hockey's top individual honor, the annual Hobey Baker award, has gone to three Harvard players, giving the Crimson more winners than any other school. The three peerless icemen are brothers Mark Fusco '83, M.B.A. '90, and Scott Fusco '86, plus Lane MacDonald '88.
The 1980s--a stellar decade under Bill Cleary--climaxed in 1989, when Harvard went all the way to win the NCAA championship, beating Minnesota in overtime on an unforgettable goal by Ed Krayer '89. MacDonald, who led that team to such unprecedented heights, credits much of Harvard's hockey success to the continuity and stability provided by the coaching staff.
There has indeed been great continuity in the program, which has had only three head coaches since 1950. Current head coach Ronn Tomassoni worked under Cleary, who had assisted and played under Ralph ("Cooney") Weiland. And the generational links are not limited to coaches; occasionally, stars from different generations have passed the puck to each other. In 1984, when MacDonald was a freshman, Cavanagh played alongside the young standout in an alumni game. "I thought, if I had this guy on my line, I could still be playing!" laughs Cavanagh, adding, "Of course, there were also great players in the 1920s; as I've gotten older, I find myself more able to appreciate their game. Today the kids have gotten bigger, stronger, and faster, and the equipment has improved. A lot has changed. But it's still a fast game, played on ice."
~Craig Lambert
 The women's soccer team won its third consecutive Ivy League title by defeating Brown 2-1 in Providence on November 9. Lindsay Minkus '98 (left) scored the first of Harvard's goals and got an exultant hug from Beth Zotter '00 and a congratulatory hand from Brynne Zuccaro '99. Photograph by Jon Chase |
Let it be known: this fall, Harvard's women booters proved what some soccer cognoscenti have been whispering of late--this side can play with any team in the nation. In the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament, Harvard--ranked seventeenth nationally--took on top-seeded North Carolina, the country's dominant women's soccer program, with 13 national titles under its belt. Ultimately, the talented Tarheels prevailed, 1-0, in a game they clearly dominated (outshooting Harvard 21-3, for example, and taking 10 corner kicks to none for the Crimson). But the outcome remained in doubt until the final whistle. And the women from Cambridge, after playing cogent defense all afternoon, mounted an attack on both North Carolina's goal and the national championship in their season's dying minutes.
The late burst of offense fell short, and so Harvard, which last reached the NCAA quarterfinals in 1982, closed out its 13-4-2 campaign (6-1 Ivy) in Chapel Hill. But there was much to marvel at and cherish in this season of surprises. The autumn began on an unexpected note when star midfielder Emily Stauffer '98 chose to take the year off, due to the serious illness of her brother. Then, midway through the schedule, Jaime Chu '98, an accomplished defender, tore a ligament in her left leg during practice, putting her out for the season with a mirror image of the injury that had sidelined her last year. Nonetheless, the deeply gifted side shut out four of its first five opponents before hitting one bad patch--three consecutive overtime games that netted Harvard a pair of 1-1 ties with Boston College and George Mason, sandwiched around a 3-2 loss to Yale, their only Ivy defeat.
But then the booters found their rhythm, winning nine of the next 10 contests and not allowing more than a single goal in any of those victories. They did sustain one 5-0 shelling at the hands of powerhouse Connecticut, but also enjoyed a blowout of their own, cremating Princeton, 6-1.
After Harvard seized its third straight Ivy title, the League added a few individual honors to the collective glory. Junior striker Naomi Miller (see Harvard Magazine, September-October 1997, cover) was named Ivy League Player of the Year, a title Stauffer had monopolized the two previous seasons. Miller led the Ivies in scoring with four goals and six assists in league play, while compiling seven goals and 11 assists overall. The All-Ivy first team included Miller as well as Devon Bingham '98 and Gina Foster '99.
Then it was on to the NCAA tournament, where Harvard started by settling an old score. The University of Massachusetts had defeated them in three previous post-season matchups, but this year Harvard eliminated the Minutewomen decisively, 2-0. Freshman Erin Aeschliman scored both goals, the first on a rebound, the second with a low-flying rocket launched from 18 yards out.
Aeschliman started the season as a JV player who saw her first varsity minutes only in the tenth game of the year. Yet she also figured importantly in the next NCAA showdown, the second-round match against George Mason. With Ohiri Field surrounded by miniature Alpine ranges of snow, the two sides sustained an exceptional level of intensity for more than two hours. After trading goals early in the second half, the score remained deadlocked, 1-1, despite Harvard's dominance of the play (the Crimson outshot the Patriots 22-14 and had a 13-5 edge in corner kicks). Late in the second half, stalwart goalkeeper Anne Browning '00 suffered a broken cheekbone while making a daring save, and Jen Burney '99 took over the net. After two scoreless overtime periods, the game went to a third overtime, this one sudden death. Twelve minutes in, midfielder Ashley Berman '99 bedeviled the visitors with an elegant run down the flank, then slotted the ball beautifully to a well-positioned Aeschliman, who uncorked a spinning shot that Miller finished for the goal in a classic bang-bang play. Harvard, 2-1.
All that was left was a trip south for the David-Goliath matchup with the stars of North Carolina, a team that had compiled a 280-4-9 record since their 1986 opener, and was 23-0-1 this year. In their two previous NCAA tournament games, the Lady Tarheels had routed opponents 5-0 and 6-0. But when Harvard came to town, Goliath could put only one goal on the board. That was enough to win, but also enough to open many eyes. Next fall, many of coach Tim Wheaton's charges--such as Berman, Browning, Aeschliman, and Miller--should return, looking for more. And armed with a slingshot named Emily Stauffer.
The men's soccer team, despite some standout performances both individually and as a team, finished its season with a middling 6-7-4 record overall and a 2-2-3 Ivy mark, good only for fifth place in the League, a considerable fall from last year's championship campaign. Perhaps one measure of this year's stalemated tone was the fact that in Ivy League play, the Crimson tied more games than it won or lost. All three ties were by identical 2-2 scores, recorded against Yale, Cornell, and Brown.
The booters' autumn ended on a disappointing streak that included losses to Dartmouth, Maine, and Hartwick, plus the tie with Brown, the eventual Ivy champions. But immediately before this tailspin had come the men's finest run of play: consecutive shutouts of Northeastern (3-0), Princeton (3-0), and Fairfield (2-0). Harvard's best single game might have been their 5-0 trampling of Boston University, the Crimson pentangle of goals scored in an explosive second half against a side that eventually won the America East title.
Captain Tom McLaughlin '98 led the Ivies in scoring for the second straight year, tallying 12 goals and eight assists. In his final game, McLaughlin notched two assists, the first of which made him Harvard's all-time assist leader, breaking the record of 23 set by Phil Kydes '72. McLaughlin also was named to the All-Ivy first team, along with Ricky Le '98, the tough, tenacious back who played in 65 career games for the Crimson.
Junior goalkeeper Jordan Dupuis racked up five shutouts, an .822 save percentage, and a goals-against average of 1.18 in 15 matches. He made second team All-Ivy, as did teammates Lee Williams '99 and Will Hench '00.