Harvard Holds On to Ivy Title

The Boston Globe
by Marvin Pave
November 10, 1997

PROVIDENCE - Neither rain, nor muddy Stevenson Field, nor a spirited second-half comeback by host Brown could keep the Harvard women's soccer team from successfully defending its Ivy League title yesterday.

The Crimson, thanks to first-half goals by Lindsay Minkus and Gina Foster - and clutch goalkeeping by Anne Browning - held on for a 2-1 victory that clinched a third consecutive league title and with it an automatic bid to the NCAA Division 1 tournament, whose pairings will be announced tomorrow.

Harvard, 11-3-2 overall and 6-1 in the league, wasn't assured of victory until a frantic, hurry-up Brown corner kick with 12 seconds to play was controlled by Crimson defender Beth Zotter, who, like the rest of her teammates, needed a hot shower and some serious dry cleaning of her
uniform after the game.

The match was delayed one hour while the grounds crew prepped the rain-soaked field that had been deemed unplayable the night before for the Harvard-Brown men's match.

Harvard, which won seven of its last eight games after a 4-2-1 start, looked like it would never be threatened after taking a 2-0 halftime lead.

Minkus scored her fourth goal of the season just 4:09 into the game off a corn kick. The Crimson had two whacks at the loose ball before Minkus clicked from close-in. Then, at 19:03, defender Foster intercepted a Brown clearing pass and maneuvered a few steps past a defender before unleashing a 35-foot blast to the left corner. Brown keeper Elise Roy, a standout with 12 saves(Browning had four), had little chance to move laterally on the soggy turf.

''I saw it coming, so I took the opportunity. I heard my teammates say,`shoot, shoot, you have the shot,''' said Foster of her third goal this season.The other two came while playing forward and one of those was also a game-winner. ''Sometimes you have to lay back on a play like that, but sometimes you have to take the risk.''

The second half was all Brown. Phil Pincince's team unleashed seven shots over the last 45 minutes and scored at the 54:11 mark when Libby Lyons' chip shot deflected off Browning, who made a futile swipe at the ball as it crossed the line.

But Browning, a sophomore who is also a member of the crew team, steered her soccer teammates through some rough waters in the final minutes. With 20 minutes to play, Browning got her hands on a 15-foot bullet off the foot of Erin Johnson; with five minutes left, she moved out smartly to smother an Amy Broadhurst bad-angle shot; and with 1:40 remaining, she leaped high at the goal line to snare Emily Dreblow's arcing shot.

Browning, who took over the starting keeper's role midway through the season, also made a big save in the first half when she dove to smother a partial break-in by Kira Kania-Lloyd to preserve the two-goal margin. Browning said that Foster's goal gave Harvard its biggest lift of the afternoon.

''Gina's sense of the field is amazing,'' said Browning. ''It's almost as if she enters a zone and everybody else disappears.''

The road to the NCAA tournament was a bumpy one for Harvard at mid-season. Captain and leading scorer Emily Stauffer chose not to play this season so she could lend support to her family and her brother Matt, the former Williams soccer captain, who is battling leukemia.

Senior midfielder Kristen Bowes was lost for the season with a stress fracture after the seventh game and junior halfback Jaime Chu's knee injury three weeks ago ended her '97 campaign.

''We got a little cautious in the second half,'' said Harvard coach Tim Wheaton, ''but Anne Browning played great. She came up real big.

''When we went to Virginia last month and tied George Mason and defeated Maryland, we got some confidence, and our kids just moved on and fought through the early season adversity. They're a gutsy group.''

This story ran on page D14 of the Boston Globe on 11/10/97.
© Copyright 1997 Globe Newspaper Company.