Comment on this article An Autumn of Discontent
Except for the successful women’s cross country squad, the fall sports season was rife with disappointment. But the football team made sure Harvard had to earn its first perfect season since 1913.
February 2002
by Jeremy Licht ’04 Jeremy Licht covers football for the Yale Daily News. All through the preseason, the media hounded football coach Jack Siedlecki with the same questions. Who could hope to replace Eric Johnson ’01, Yale’s all-time leading receiver and now a starting tight end with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers? Where would Yale’s running game be now that the career rushing leader Rashad Bartholomew ’01 had departed? How do you plug the holes left by the graduation of four defensive All-Ivy players? The answers emerged. Billy Brown ’02 stepped up to have one of the best seasons for a Yale wide receiver, finishing the year with 71 catches, 946 yards, and a second team All-Ivy selection. Yale churned out 140 yards per game on the ground and only failed to break the century mark in rushing twice in nine games. The defense finished second in the Ivy League in yards allowed per game. The Bulldogs jumped out to a 3–1 start and with five league games left and they considered themselves serious contenders for the Ivy League title. They lost all five of those final games, though, culminating in a 35–23 defeat at the hands of Harvard in the 118th playing of The Game. While Harvard celebrated its first undefeated, untied season since 1913, Yale contemplated a last-place finish in the Ivy League. “After being 3–1, I did not expect anything like what happened,” Siedlecki said. No one did—but the football team’s fall from prominence was not alone in an autumn of discontent for Yale athletics. The men’s soccer team set high expectations with its fast start in the 2001 season. Yale beat two teams ranked in the nation’s top 20 in September, en route to a 5–2–1 record and serious thoughts of an NCAA Tournament bid. Those hopes disappeared when, like their football counterparts, the soccer team embarked on a five-game losing streak. As the Elis faltered down the stretch, they tallied only three goals in six games. The offensive firepower of midfielder Jay Alberts ’03, a two-time All-Ivy player and perhaps the best offensive player in the Ivy League, was sorely missed as he sat out the season with mononucleosis. Other maladies did their part to slow the Elis, especially in goal, where the Bulldogs lost two starting goaltenders to injury during the course of the year. The team occupied last place in the Ivy League with a 1–5–1 record, its worst finish under sixth-year head coach Brian Tompkins.
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“Disappointed would be a good way to describe it. Discouraged would not.” |
“We encountered a pothole on the road and not a major detour,” said Tompkins, who will welcome back the players responsible for 86 percent of the team’s scoring next season and a healthy Alberts. “Disappointed would be a good way to describe it—discouraged would not.” The women’s soccer team also showed promise at the season’s start. They opened the season with three straight victories, averaging four goals a game. The scoring well soon dried up, however, as the Elis were shut out in seven of their next ten games. After losing eight of 11 games, the team finished the season on a high note by beating Brown 5–1 on Senior Day at the Soccer-Lacrosse Stadium and then handing Ivy champion Princeton its only league loss of the season, 1–0. The women finished fifth in the league standings with a 2–3–2 Ivy record, 7–8–2 overall. The one team to live up to expectations this fall was women’s cross country. A year removed from a seventh place finish at the NCAA Championships, the Bulldogs followed it up with another strong showing on the national stage. The harriers repeated as Heptagonal champions and finished 13th at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships in Greenville, South Carolina. Twin sisters Kate O’Neill ’03 and Laura O’Neill ’03 were named All-Americans for the second straight year, finishing 11th and 26th respectively at the national meet. Another autumnal highlight was the men’s lightweight crew, which defended its title at the Head of the Charles, promising to be top contenders for the national championship again this spring. After a disappointing seventh-place finish at the Heptagonals, the men’s cross country team went on to make some noise later in the season, finishing fifth at the NCAA Northeast Regional and second at the IC4A championships. The field hockey team had an encouraging year as second-year head coach Ainslee Lamb continued to rebuild the program. The team’s seven wins matched the combined win totals of its previous two seasons, but it was truly a year of near misses; Yale’s six league losses were all decided by a single goal, and three of the defeats came in overtime. The volleyball team finished the season in sixth place in the Ivy League, with a 3–11 conference record. Despite the sparse achievements in an otherwise barren autumn, football’s fortunes marked the climax—or perhaps anticlimax—of the sports season. Opening the 2001 season with a 40–13 drubbing of Cornell, the team demonstrated it had the personnel to make up for graduation losses. Billy Brown caught nine passes for 177 yards and three touchdowns. The Eli running game rolled up 103 yards, 82 of them from freshman Robert Carr ’05, making his college debut. Quarterback Peter Lee ’02, coming off a stellar 1999 season, was his same superb self, completing 23 of 31 passes for 279 yards and four touchdowns. The Bulldogs were down 22–14 with eight minutes to play at Holy Cross the next week, when Lee was handed the script for a late-game comeback and acted it out perfectly. He led the team down the field twice in the final minutes for a touchdown and a last-second field goal that gave the Elis a 23–22 victory, despite having been outplayed for much of the day. At home against Dartmouth in their next game, the Elis capped the Tercentennial Weekend with the first Sunday game in the 129-year history of Yale football. The Big Green led 32–20 with seven minutes left when Lee and company took on the come-from-behind role they had executed so successfully the week before. A Lee touchdown pass with 4:29 left pulled the Elis within five, but a final touchdown drive fell short, and Dartmouth won, 32–27. Lee was usually automatic in those late-game situations, so the failure in the Dartmouth game was an ominous sign. Lee had injured his ankle on a first-half tackle, but stayed in the game. But in stalling on that final drive, he was not the same quarterback who had led Yale to nine wins in his first twelve starts. And he was not the same quarterback for the rest of the season. The next week against Fordham, Lee watched from the sidelines as back-up T.J. Hyland ’02 started in his place, leading Yale to a 36–27 victory. Lee returned to the lineup against Pennsylvania the next weekend and endured a nightmarish game. He was sacked ten times and completed only 19 of 44 passes as Yale lost 21–3. Against Columbia a week later, the Chicago native and University of Wisconsin transfer did not fare much better. Lee was uncharacteristically inaccurate, completing only 28 of 56 passing attempts and being sacked five times in Yale’s 28–14 loss to the Lions. Lee would not play again the rest of the season. “When Peter got hurt, his performance was affected over basically three games,” Siedlecki said. “It is hard to be a leader when your own performance isn’t meeting your own expectations.” With Hyland as the starting quarterback, the Bulldogs improved their offensive output, but the defense was not up to the task of stopping Yale’s opponents. Against Brown, the Elis yielded 450 yards of offense as they dropped a 37–34 shootout at the Yale Bowl. The next week at Princeton, the Bulldogs held a 14–0 lead midway through the second quarter and looked as if they were ready to salvage their season with a strong showing in the H-Y-P’s. The Tigers reeled off 34 straight points, though, and Yale returned to New Haven with its worst defeat of the year. Still, heading into the Yale-Harvard game, there was no dearth of motivation for the Yale team. The Class of 2002 had the opportunity to become the first group of Yale seniors to win all four straight varsity games against Harvard since the men of 1908 accomplished the feat. On top of that, the Crimson entered The Game undefeated, and the Elis wanted nothing more than to be the spoiler. Harvard opened the game with a touchdown, and from that point forward Yale was playing catch-up. Trailing by 12 points at the half, the Bulldogs opened the third quarter with a scoring drive to pull within seven, 22–17. On the ensuing drive, the Eli defense came up with a big stop near midfield and the Crimson punting unit came on the field for the first time of the afternoon. Instead of giving the ball back though, Harvard executed a perfect fake punt, gaining 42 yards and the momentum. The play set up a Neil Rose touchdown run to go along with the All-Ivy quarterback’s four touchdown passes on the afternoon. In the end, Harvard overpowered the Elis 35–23. It was a disappointing finish to the careers of the Yale seniors, who had not previously endured a losing season or a loss to the Crimson. Lee’s injury was far from the only cause of the team’s struggles. Inconsistent play on offense, a sometimes overwhelmed defense and further injuries, especially at the running back position, all combined to transform what had the makings of a promising season into an exercise in frustration.  |
