Comment on this article
Ouch!
Despite a solid season for men’s and women’s soccer and most other sports, the struggles of Jack Siedlecki’s first Eli football team made it a tough fall for Bulldog fans.
by Zak Pines ’00
February 1998
Zak Pines, a sophomore in Morse College, is a staff reporter for the Yale Daily News.
The success of a Yale athletic team is judged traditionally by two criteria: Did it win a league title, and did it beat Harvard? Using these standards, most of the 1997 Eli fall sports teams can be considered successes. While the women’s cross-country team was the only Bulldogs squad to win a title—the ECAC Championship—every team, except for men’s football and men’s soccer, defeated the Crimson.
Although men’s soccer managed only a 2–2 tie against Harvard, the team finished with an 11–5–1 record (4–2–1 Ivy), its highest win total in six years. The team entered the final regular-season contest against Princeton riding a six-game winning streak and still in contention for the Ivy League title, but a 3–2 loss to the Tigers dropped the Bulldogs to third place.
“We had a strong second half and came very close to winning the Ivy title,” said second-year head coach Brian Tompkins. “At midseason we weren’t really in the running for the title. To even get close was an accomplishment.”
The team had several players among the league scoring leaders. Craig Yacks ’98 set a single-season school record with a league-leading 12 assists, while Phil Harris ’00 led the Ancient Eight in scoring with seven goals in seven league games.
Soccer was also one of the bright spots in women’s sports: The women’s team matched the men’ with an 11–5–1 regular-season record, finished second in the Ivy League with a 5–2 campaign, and lost in the finals of the ECAC post-season tournament for the second consecutive season. But the Bulldogs’ most impressive achievement occurred on September 27 against a Harvard team that entered the contest with a 22-game Ivy League winning streak. Meg Sullivan ’00 scored a goal five minutes into the sudden death overtime to lift Yale to a 3–2 win. Sullivan scored the Bulldogs’ second and third goals, both assisted by Annie Kwon ’99. Before the game-winning goal had even hit the back of the net, third-year head coach Rudy Meredith and the players on the bench swarmed Kwon and Sullivan in celebration.
“Beating Harvard was a high point of the season,” said captain Jill Rubinstein ’98, who missed the entire year with a torn ligament suffered in the pre-season. “This was the first time our seniors had beaten Harvard. It was a huge win.”
The women’s field hockey season was also highlighted by an overtime victory over Harvard. The Bulldogs defeated the Crimson 1–0 on a sudden-death goal by captain Liz Dawson ’98 and finished the season fourth in the Ivy League with a 3–4 league mark and 8–9 overall record.
The women’s volleyball team, meanwhile, avenged a regular-season loss to Harvard by beating the league champion Cantabs in the Ivy League tournament. The loss was Harvard’s first defeat to an Ivy League opponent all season. The Bulldogs finished third in the tournament, fourth in the league in the regular season with a 4–3 mark and had an 18–13 overall record, the team’s ninth consecutive winning campaign under head coach Peg Schofield. Rosie Wustrack '99 won her second straight Ivy League Player of the Year award.
Both men’s and women’s golf teams had strong fall seasons, each winning a tournament in the final weekend of September. The men won the Dartmouth Invitational, while the women won the Yale Invitational. Eddie Brockner '01 brought home first place in the Army Invitational, and Natalie Wong '98 was the women’s top scorer in four of five meets and won the Princeton Invitational.
While the golf team boasted many outstanding individual performances, cross country runner Ariana Kelly '99 had perhaps the best fall season of any Yale athlete. The Bulldogs' top finisher in every race in which she competed, Kelly won three meets and placed eighth out of 191 runners at the NCAA district qualifier meet to earn a trip to the NCAA championship.
Thanks to Kelly and a deep squad including Nancy Wolcott '01, the Bulldogs won the HYP's, the annual meet against Harvard and Princeton, for the first time in seven years. The team also won the ECAC Championship, its fourth title in 18 seasons under head coach Mark Young.
The men’s cross country team was not as successful as its female counterparts but did finish second in the HYP's, defeating Harvard while falling to Princeton. But without graduated Nationals qualifiers Chris Gansen '97 and Patrick McMurray '97, Yale finished 11th of 16 at the IC4As and ninth of nine at the Heptagonals.
The men’s football team suffered similar struggles under first-year head coach Jack Siedlecki, the former Amherst leader who succeeded Carm Cozza, the winningest coach in Yale history. Partly due to a wave of injuries that sidelined three quarterbacks and seven running backs for parts of the year, the Bulldogs ended the season 1–9 and with an 0–7 Ivy League mark, their first winless league record since 1958. (Technically, Yale can claim a victory over Penn, which last month had to forfeit five wins after a Quaker defensive tackle was found to have been ineligible for play. But that is cold comfort.)
The Bulldogs' lone victory came in its third game against Valparaiso at Soldier Field in Chicago, but the Bulldogs went on to lose their last seven contests. Yale did, however, deliver one of its top performances against league champion Harvard in the 114th edition of The Game.
Harvard entered the final Saturday of the season with a 6–0 league record and an 8–1 overall mark and opened up a 14–0 halftime lead with a Chris Menick two-yard touchdown run and a Jared Chupaila 16-yard scoring catch from quarterback Rich Linden.
But, as the fourth quarter got under way, the Bulldogs, trailing 17-0, began to rally. On the second play of the final period, quarterback Joe Walland '00 scrambled for 22 yards to move the ball to the Yale 43 yard line. Walland then completed consecutive passes to fullback Eric Johnson '01 to bring the ball to the Harvard 20. Two plays later, Walland completed an 18-yard pass to the outstretched hands of Ken Marschner '99 in the right corner of the end zone. The touchdown brought the Bulldogs within ten points.
After Harvard failed to convert on fourth-and-two from the Yale 20, Walland and the offense stormed back onto the field with 6:06 remaining. Five completions—three to Jake Borden '00 and two to Marschner—set up a first-and-ten on the Harvard 19-yard line with less than two minutes remaining.
But after a pair of incomplete passes, the Crimson’s Jason Hughes sacked Walland for a six-yard loss. On fourth down, Walland’s pass sailed over the head of Borden and fell incomplete, ending Yale’s hopes of an upset. Linden downed the ball twice, and with no timeouts, the Bulldogs could do nothing but hold their heads high after an outstanding effort.
The Bulldogs had been outgained by only 12 yards by the league’s top scoring offense and held the ball for nearly seven minutes longer than the Crimson. Yale played Harvard to its second tightest Ivy League game of the season and managed to score against a Crimson defense that shut out second-place Dartmouth and third-place Penn.
Of course, The Game is not about moral victories, and this edition will go down as Harvard’s final victory in its first 7–0 Ivy League season ever. But the game may also be remembered as a stepping stone for the Yale program under Siedlecki. The Bulldogs challenged league champion Crimson and gave the supporters who have followed the team’s struggles a glimpse of what the program may offer in seasons to come.  |
