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Comment on this article Historic Feet
Amid a season of strong Eli performances, the women’s soccer team stood in the spotlight.
February 2003
by Carl Bialik Carl Bialik, a journalist in New York, wrote about the men’s basketball team for the Yale Alumni Magazine last May. When the women’s soccer team basked in the glow of its first NCAA tournament appearance in November, the coach and one of his players had reason to look back with wonder, because the groundwork for that sterling performance was laid 12 years earlier, when Ali Cobbett met Rudy Meredith. Ali, then a nine-year-old midfielder, and her sister Lindsey, then ten, traveled 20 minutes every spring Friday night from Wallingford to the New Haven campus of Southern Connecticut State University to play for Coach Meredith’s 10-and-under team. “Lindsey hated soccer because she was missing school dances,” Ali Cobbett recalls. “But I remember loving it, and having so much fun with Rudy as my coach.” She, in turn, made a strong impression on Meredith, then an assistant women’s soccer coach at Yale, who says, “Ali was the youngest kid on a year-older team, but she still was the best player.”
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“When Ali Cobbett said she would be interested in coming to Yale, I almost passed out from shock.”
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In 1998, the two joined forces again. Cobbett starred on the Meredith-coached under-16 team, the Weston Wild Things, and together they won a national championship. Meredith by then had succeeded Felice Duffy as Yale’s head coach, and he knew the team’s success would boost his reputation among in-state recruits. But he thought that his experience coaching Cobbett would, if anything, be a disadvantage in recruiting her to come to Yale. “It rarely, rarely ever happens that you coach the same kid for that long,” Meredith says. “Maybe she wants to have a new experience … I never thought I’d have a chance to coach her in college. When she said to me she would be interested in coming to Yale, I almost passed out from shock.” Fast forward four years, and Cobbett is almost ready to pass out from overactive nerves. The team Meredith has assembled—featuring a star freshman class and an excellent senior class including All-Ivy first team players Chandra King, Jennie Garver, captain Cobbett and two other Connecticut standouts—has gathered at Eli’s on Whitney with athletic director Tom Beckett and other athletic administrators to watch ESPN News for word on whether they have been chosen for the NCAA tournament. The 11-4-2 (3-3-1) season had ended with a disappointing 2-0 loss to Brown, heightening their anxiety. But finally, when the last of the four draws is announced, the Bulldogs learn they’ll do the unprecedented: play in the NCAA College Cup against Villanova, a nationally ranked team. Bulldogs on various athletic fields this fall learned they, too, could compete with the best, raising Yale’s athletic profile and expectations for success. Men’s soccer kicked off an ultimately inconsistent season with an upset win over defending national champion North Carolina. Field hockey shook off a poor start to win its last six regular-season games and then, as the lowest seed, swept the ECAC tournament with two convincing victories. Women’s volleyball had a somewhat disappointing campaign, but managed to finish above .500 with a come-from-behind win over Brown in its final match. Men’s cross country also struggled, but sophomore Lucas Meyer finished strongly against top competition. Women’s cross country narrowly missed a chance to return to the NCAA tournament, but senior runners and sisters Laura and Kate O'Neill qualified individually, with Kate’s second-place finish the best in league history. And men’s football overcame injuries to finish with a winning record, giving some top I-AA teams a scare along the way.
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“They have explosiveness, speed, can get to the hole, and can wait for holes to occur.”
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The football team’s first crucial injury came when junior quarterback Alvin Cowan broke his leg amid a rout over Cornell. Sophomore Jeffrey Mroz stepped in without missing a beat, finishing the game and beating Holy Cross the following week. The rushing attack did most of the heavy lifting, led by sophomore Robert Carr’s explosion for 454 yards in those two games. Carr and freshman David Knox were the top two backs in the league this year, according to captain Jason Lange. “They have explosiveness, speed, can get to the hole, and can wait for holes to occur,” says Lange. Yet a dispiriting midseason three-game losing streak threatened to derail the Bulldogs' season. They followed a poor performance in a loss to Dartmouth with a 14-7 loss at Lehigh, where Yale nearly ended the Mountain Hawks' 26-game home winning streak, then lost by 21 to Penn—the narrowest victory margin for the dominating Quakers in league play this year. The 2001 Bulldogs followed up a 3-1 start with five losses to end the season. But this year’s team, despite further holes in the offense created by injuries to receiver P.J. Collins and running back Jay Schulze, rose to the occasion, winning three straight leading up to The Game. “We really matured after those three losses and got a lot better,” Mroz says. The turnaround looked complete when the Bulldogs dominated the first half against Harvard and took a 6-0 lead. But a quarterback switch flummoxed the Yale defense, as Ryan Fitzpatrick replaced Neil Rose in the second quarter and repeatedly found holes as he twisted and lunged for yardage. His ability to mix runs with deep passes to senior Harvard receiver Carl Morris ultimately clinched the game for the Crimson, 20-13. The O'Neill twins of women’s cross country are as similar as can be, on and off the course. “The difference is so subtle,” says coach Mark Young, who nonetheless can distinguish them based on a slight difference in their arm motion while running. “Both are unfailingly considerate and polite, and both are much more interested in having the team succeed than having their own success.” This season, then, created conflicting emotions for the two—their best-ever NCAA results came without their teammates, who just missed qualifying because of disappointing results at the start of an injury-plagued season. Still, finishing No. 2 and 13, respectively, Kate and Laura ended their cross country careers with a great personal flourish. And they have already had an impact on recruiting, as many of this year’s talented but injury-ridden freshmen runners came to Yale to run with the O'Neills. “They’re already talking about being a national-caliber team,” says Young of his freshmen.
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“In the past, people wanted to come to Yale because it’s Yale.”
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No one expects a bigger leap for his team next season than Meredith. His Bulldogs upset Villanova on penalty kicks in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, then fell to Nebraska 1-0 in the second round. Immediately after that, Meredith was off to Raleigh, North Carolina, to build buzz from this season with recruits playing in a tournament. Then he flew to San Diego for the Surf Cup tournament, interrupting his recruiting work briefly for a Thanksgiving dinner at Denny's. “I want to seize the moment and capitalize on the success of the tournament,” Meredith says, four years after he capitalized on his youth-league championship to assemble what he calls his most special class. “In the past, people wanted to come to Yale because it’s Yale … Now I’m trying to attract the kid who wants to play at a high level of soccer. That’s what we’ve been trying to create.”  |
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