Lacrosse captures first Ivy win in four years

It almost didn’t happen.
It had been close to four years—1,455 days, to be precise—since the last Columbia lacrosse victory over an Ivy League foe.

In the time since that win, the Lions had dropped 27 straight conference matches. And though Columbia’s opponent in the team’s second-to-last league game of the season, Harvard, has been equally inept in Ivy play this year, Saturday afternoon’s game in Cambridge still came down to the last minute.

But for the first time in what can best be described as a long time, the Light Blue was finally able to add a mark to the win column.

With just 39.9 seconds left in regulation and the game tied at 10, Gabrielle Geronimos—a sophomore at Greenwich High School in Connecticut when Columbia last won an Ivy game—bounced a shot past Harvard goalkeeper Katherine Martino to give the Lions the 11-10 win. The goal saved the Lions from a second-half collapse against the Crimson, which had scored three goals in the last 10 minutes of the half to tie the game.

As well documented as Columbia’s struggles on the field have been, Harvard has also seen its fair share of hardship in recent years. Once a women’s lacrosse powerhouse, the Crimson has not put together a .500-or-better season in league play since 1996, when the team went 3-3. Since that season, Harvard has gone 22-61 in league play.

Saturday’s game was not a clash of the titans. The Crimson came into the game at 1-4 in Ivy play with an average margin of defeat against conference foes of eight goals. Columbia, meanwhile, made its final road trip of the year at 0-5, most recently doubled up by Yale, 12-6, on April 8. And despite a 19-goal outburst against nonconference Bryant in its most recent game, the Light Blue struggled out of the gate against Harvard. After the Crimson’s Katie Doherty opened scoring 3 1/2 minutes into the contest, Harvard added two goals in the next three minutes to overshadow a Rachael Ryan score and take the lead at 3-1.

Starting slow has been a problem for the Lions all season. Only once in the team’s five Ivy games prior to Saturday’s match had Columbia held a halftime lead, and even that modest advantage didn’t stick for the Light Blue. But down 3-1, the Lions managed to battle back, with a goal by Geronimos and two straight goals by Holly Glynn sandwiching a goal by Harvard’s Tyler Petropulos. The teams went into the lockers tied at four.

The back-and-forth battle continued after the break. After Brittany Shannon’s first and only goal of the game gave Columbia the 5-4 lead, Doherty notched two straight scores to push the Crimson back on top by a single goal. But Glynn was equal to the task. The senior attacker from Waltham, Mass. pulled off another back-to-back goal spree, with both marks unassisted, to put the Lions up 7-6 and propel her into first place on the team for goals this season with 35.

Another pair of Columbia goals, this time from Ryan and Geronimos, gave Columbia a three-goal cushion with 20 minutes to play. But after that opening 10-minute stretch of the second half that saw eight goals combined, both offenses quieted down, and the Lions and Crimson traded scores to keep the Columbia advantage at three with 12:27 to play.

But that lull proved to be the quiet before the storm for Harvard. The Crimson rattled off three straight goals over a 10-minute span, including Jess Halpern’s game-tying score with just 1:10 remaining, to put any talk of an Ivy win on hold for the Light Blue. The stage seemed to be set for yet another late-game fold by the Lions, who had blown their best chance at an Ivy win against Brown on April 4 by surrendering 11 goals in the second period.

But thanks to Geronimos’ third goal of the game, the Light Blue survived, giving head coach Kerri Whitaker just her second conference win in her time at Columbia. The win was also the first for the senior class, including goalkeeper Emma Mintz, who made seven saves in the victory. The win also snapped a six-game losing streak for the Lions and put them above .500 on the year at 7-6.

Glynn led the way with four goals. Doherty, Petropulos, and Halpern provided the only offense for Harvard, combining for all 10 Crimson points.

Columbia will take another break from conference play with a trip to Philadelphia to play La Salle on April 22. The Lions will play their last conference match of the year on April 26 against Dartmouth at home.