April 3, 2004

Final Stats| Photo Gallery

Despite being down two goals nearly ten minutes into the first half, the No. 14 Yale women's lacrosse team rallied to defeat archrival Harvard 8-6 Saturday afternoon in New Haven, CT. Sophie Melniker, Sarah Driscoll and Miles Whitman scored two goals each.

Casey Owens of Harvard (4-4, 0-2 Ivy) gave the Bulldogs (6-3, 2-1 Ivy) a two-goal deficit to open scoring on the day. It took almost ten minutes for the usually fast-paced Yale offense to get on the board with a goal by Katherine Sargent, assisted by Melniker, bringing the Bulldogs within one of their rival.

The Bulldogs would go on to score the next four goals of the half to put Yale up 5-2 after the first thirty minutes of play. Driscoll scored her first goal on the day unassisted with 17:34 left in the half. Sarah Scalia added her second goal of the season with 7:30 remaining in the first half and after receiving a pass from Lindsay Levin, giving Levin her first career assist at Yale. Whitman continued the offensive momentum, scoring on a free position shot and using her trademark speed to get past Crimson defenders, adding an unassisted second goal with only 51 seconds left in the half.

Yale's powerful offense continued dominating the Crimson in the second half. Free position goals by Driscoll and Melniker, who also added an unassisted goal, put the Bulldogs up 8-3 with little more than five minutes left in the game.

The Crimson mounted a comeback with 1:51 left to play with an Allison Kaveney goal, assisted by Caroline Hines. 20 seconds later, Catherine Sproul added an unassisted goal to bring the Crimson within three. Although Kaveney added another goal with seven seconds left to play, Yale's defense held on to stop Harvard's rally, ending the game by a final score of 8-6.

Yale's defensive leaders were Jennifer Kessel, Meredith Mack and Kerry Docherty, who all had two caused turnovers. Kessel also led the Bulldogs in ground balls with three.

"Harvard's got some great one-v-one players," said Yale head coach Amanda O'Leary. "We knew Casey Owens was one of their better players, so we put Jenn Kessel on her. Jenn did a nice job. Our defensive unit played very well."

Bulldog goaltender Lonnie Sarnell played all 60 minutes in the cage and had five saves.

Yale's next game will be a home contest against Rutgers on Wednesday 3:00 pm before they travel next Saturday to undefeated Princeton, unanimously ranked 1st in the nation by IWLCA, in a game beginning at 3:00 p.m. that will be televised on the College Sports Television Network.

Written by: Emily Field '05, Sports Information Department