This was not how the regular season was supposed to end for the Columbia women’s soccer team. After a heartbreaking double-overtime loss to Princeton on Oct. 18, Columbia had rebounded with two consecutive conference wins. The team had moved into a three-way tie with Harvard and Princeton for first in the Ivy League standings.
The Lions had positioned themselves to win at least a share of the conference championship—the second in their program’s history—going into Saturday’s contest at Harvard. However, their title hopes crumbled with one controversial call.

After being sidelined for most of the season with an ankle injury, sophomore forward Chrissy Butler made her first start of the year for Columbia. Butler was one of the Lions’ three leading scorers as a freshman with five tallies, but she was unable to provide an offensive spark in Cambridge.

Columbia controlled the first few minutes of play, but Harvard regrouped and developed a strong attack of its own. The Crimson created scoring opportunities that were mostly blocked, but eventually wore out the Light Blue defense.

“They won a lot of corner kicks, and that was difficult for us, to get in a run of play when we kept having to defend so deep in our half,” Columbia head coach Kevin McCarthy said.

Harvard finished the first period with six corner kicks, while Columbia only had two. In the 27th minute, junior forward Christina Hagner found the back of the net to give Harvard a 1-0 lead. The Lions’ offense attacked near the Crimson goal on a few occasions, but could not capitalize on any chances to score. Harvard held on to its advantage for the rest of the half.

Early in the second period, Columbia got the goal it needed when junior captain Sophie Reiser set up freshman forward Ashlin Yahr. The match became more of a back-and-forth one, but the Crimson dominated offensively with seven corner kicks to the Lions’ two. In addition, Harvard outshot Columbia, 8-5. The score remained knotted at 1-1, and the match went into overtime.

“In the second half, we had a good run where we scored,” McCarthy said. “But credit to them [Harvard], they kept putting us on the defensive.”

The Crimson continued to test the Lions with its powerful attack. Just over one minute into the overtime period, senior captain Rebecca Taylor dove to block a Harvard shot on goal. The ball ricocheted off of her and looked like it might find the back of the net, but it instead moved in the opposite direction.

Neither team was able to convert on the offensive, so the game went into a second overtime. Once again, Harvard controlled the tempo and took close shots. With about four minutes remaining, a Crimson player fired the ball toward the Lions’ goal, but it hit the crossbar and bounced off of it. It seemed that the contest would end as a tie, but one call changed everything.

With nine seconds remaining in the game, a Columbia foul in its box was called, and led to a Harvard penalty kick. After 109 minutes of hard-nosed action, the matchup—and part of the league championship—would be decided by one high-percentage shot.

“It could’ve been called an obstruction, which is not a penalty kick,” McCarthy said. “I really don’t think it was a penalty kick, and to give it at that time in the game is particularly harsh, and I went over [to the referees] for an explanation after the game. None was forthcoming.”

Junior defender Lizzy Nichols took the kick, and it flew to the right of Taylor and into the net. The game was over, and it was Harvard, not Columbia, that won a share of the Ivy title. Princeton beat Penn in double-overtime later in the day to become the conference co-champion with Harvard.

While the Lions are not automatically headed to the NCAA Tournament, McCarthy is not yet ready to consider Columbia’s season finished.

“We have an outsider’s chance of maybe getting a bid, so we’ll see,” he said. “We’ll tune into the selection show Monday night.”