Preview of Harvard vs. Duke
in the Final Four, 1986

DEVIL OF A TIME FOR HARVARD CRIMSON WILL HAVE TO DUKE IT OUT WITH A SOUTHERN POWER IN NCAA SEMIFINALS

Date: Sunday, December 7, 1986
Section: SPORTS
Page: 75

By Barry Cadigan, Boston Globe Staff

DURHAM, N.C. -- When Harvard's soccer team goes against
Duke here this afternoon in the NCAA national semifinals, it will be
opposing an all-American club -- with its share of All-America
players -- that hasn't lost at home since Oct. 18, 1985.

The Blue Devils are coached by John Rennie, who knows Harvard
soccer well, having watched games while earning a master's degree
at Boston University and coaching against the Crimson during six
very successful years at Columbia.

Rennie, who started his soccer coaching career at Southeastern
Massachusetts University, threw off the fetters of Ivy League
athletics to come here eight years ago because Duke promised
complete cooperation, with the best of facilities and the scholarships
the Ivies won't allow.

Duke has delivered, and so has Rennie.

The NCAA, which hungers to make soccer a higher-revenue sport,
requires this game to be played at Duke, and one of the reasons is
that its soccer stadium can accommodate three times what Harvard's
Ohiri Field can hold.

"We seat 7,500 and can hold between 8,000 and 9,000," says
Rennie. The 3,500 at Ohiri for Harvard's 2-0 quarterfinal victory
over Hartwick a week ago is about maximum without adding more
stands.

Rennie, who played soccer at Temple as an undergraduate, took the
scholarship money available to him and went out and brought in the
best US players he could find.

"Our players are totally American by design," he says. "I chose not to
recruit overseas. They would just come in here and take the fun out
of it."

He says he "brought in two British kids four or five years ago," but
never again. Yet he agrees that it is a "natural thing" for the
scholarship- less Ivies to take advantage of the international
student-athletes who become available to them, just as he did at
Columbia.

Rennie was named the New England NAIA Coach of the Year for
the job he did at Southeastern Mass., an honor that helped him win
the Columbia job. But he almost didn't take the soccer route at all.

"I had just been named the freshman basketball coach at BU when
the athletic department went through a sudden shakeup, and I was
out," he recalls. "I landed the Southeastern job instead."

In the South, where there are fewer Division 1 soccer schools than in
New England, Rennie has had the Blue Devils in the NCAAs all but
two of the eight years he has been here.

"About every four years, we have had squads that have proven good
enough to reach the NCAA finals (they lost to Indiana in the 1982
final), and this one could do it again even though they aren't the most
talented players we have had here," he says.

"We have 11 seniors on a 28-man squad, the largest squad we have
ever had. We normally keep it to 24 or 25. They are all great kids
and want to win it this year badly. We seem to have peaked at the
right time after an up-and-down season when we lost five games,
which is something we haven't done before."

The senior who draws a great deal of attention from defenders is
John Kerr of Falls Church, Va., the Atlantic Coast Conference's
player of the year, who has 13 goals and 13 assists and a total of 40
career goals. Kerr is being touted for the Hermann Trophy, college
soccer's Heisman Trophy equivalent.

Kerr has gotten so much attention in the playoffs that another striker,
Tom Stone, a junior out of Irving, Texas, has been able to score
decisive goals in victories over South Carolina, North Carolina State
and Loyola of Baltimore to get them into the Final Four. The other
forward is a freshman, Brian Benedict of Coral Springs, Fla.

Two seniors start in the midfield -- Carl Williamson of Oley, Pa., and
Everett Harper of Wappinger's Falls, N.Y., along with freshman
Joey Valenti of Tampa, Fla. The defense is directed by senior
sweeper Kelly Weadock of Richardson, Texas, who has started
every game in four years, and includes senior Darin Olson of Ann
Arbor, Mich., junior John Hardwick of Columbia, Md., and
freshman Robert Prbst of Brookfield, Wis. The goalie is a junior,
Mark Dodd, also from Richardson, who has allowed 19 goals while
making 48 saves this season.

Harvard finds itself on the opposition's turf for the first time in the
playoffs, which have seen the Crimson play host for victories over
Yale, BU and Hartwick.

But Crimson coach Jape Shattuck says that the dimensions of the
field and the type of surface (grass) is so much like Harvard's home
field that it shouldn't cause many problems.