HANOVER — Joyful screams echoed through the sleet early Saturday evening at Dartmouth College’s Scully-Fahey Field. A contingent of about a dozen fans rushed on to the whitened turf, joining the Big Green men’s lacrosse players as they mobbed winning goal-scorer Connor McGill in the aftermath of a 10-9, overtime defeat of arch-rival Harvard.
Down five goals with 11 minutes to play, Dartmouth won its Ivy League opener to snap a league-record, 34-game losing streak in improbable fashion. McGill scored all four of his goals in the contest and added an assist during the final 26 minutes.
On the winning play, the sophomore attackman charged towards the crease from the right side, fighting off a defender to reach the top of the circle. As the rebound of a Brandon Ventarola shot bounced off Crimson goaltender Christian Barnard and off the ground, McGill whacked it home out of mid-air.
Dartmouth’s skid dated to 2015 and another overtime victory against the visiting Crimson during head coach Brendan Callahan’s Ivy League debut. Eight years later, the Big Green boss shed tears as he embraced first-year athletic director Mike Harrity after the game.
“We’ve been building towards this moment and I’m excited to see it go our way,” said coach, who avoided the question when asked to share his emotions. “I’m happy for the kids. The recruiting we’ve done has paid off.”
Dartmouth took a 2-0 lead but surrendered the next four goals and trailed, 4-3, at halftime. Four minutes into the fourth quarter, the Big Green was down, 9-5, and hope was slipping away.
However, McGill scored his second goal of the day and then assisted on another by Quinn Moore. A minute later, Harvard committed a penalty and McGill scored again to cut the deficit to 9-8 with 5 minutes and 39 seconds remaining.
Thirty seconds later, Nate Davis scored from the right side and on a sharp angle, the ball appearing to strike Barnard’s far foot and spin across the goal line on the ground. It was 9-9 and Harvard’s supporters sat stunned, their Dartmouth counterparts braying and jumping in the growing gloom and ever-present precipitation.
“We weren’t winning the 50-50 ground balls in midfield,” said Callahan, whose team visits Cornell next weekend. “That’s what we concentrated on in the fourth quarter.”
With 1:35 remaining in the first, four-minute overtime, the Harvard defense allowed Ventarola to run down the right alley and veer diagonally across the center of the field. He uncorked a hard shot that Barnard, at this point clearly fighting the ball, took off the chest. Enter McGill, a 6-foot-3 product of Philadelphia’s Main Line suburbs, whose late-game heroics made history for the hosts.
“I was just in the right spot and I hockeyed it into the net,” said McGill, a four-star recruit out of Philadelphia-area power Malvern Prep, which has finished in the nation’s top 25 rankings seven times during the past decade. “This is big for our program. It’s the first win in like, what, 50 tries in the Ivy League for our program? So it’s huge.”
The Big Green’s two shortest players, the 5-8 attackman Davis and goaltender Mason Morel, played big roles in the victory. Davis had two goals and an assist and Morel, a sophomore from the lacrosse outpost of suburban Atlanta, made 11 saves in his first varsity start.
“It’s obviously amazing to get this win and get the burden off our backs,” Davis said. “We played (backs) to the wall and as a family and never thought we weren’t going to win.”
Harvard fell to 3-4 overall and 1-1 in league play.
Notes: Dartmouth wears “DG” helmet decals to honor the late David Gallagher, who died last summer after sustaining fatal injuries under Ledyard Bridge. A former men’s lacrosse player and 2020 graduate, he was in town for a delayed graduation ceremony… Dartmouth is 25-66 overall and 2-34 in Ivy play under Callahan, whose leg was tackled in a fierce embrace by his young son, Mack, as the coach conducted a postgame interview… Postgame, locker-room video footage shot by a Big Green sports information staff member showed Callahan pushing to the center of his dancing and cheering players and joining in the wild rumpus for about 20 seconds… Cornell, which beat Dartmouth, 8-7, last season, is 6-1 overall and 2-0 in league games this spring.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.