BROOKLYN, N.Y. If you’ve read any of my writings about water polo, you’ve probably picked up that I’m a St. Francis Brooklyn men’s fan. You may have also noted that my favorite opponent is Harvard. So, when these two teams meet, especially in the Terrier’s postage stamp-sized pool four stories below the Brooklyn streets, it’s like Mardi Gras for me.

Their most recent meeting took place last Saturday—on a day that polo was played in the Generoso Pope Athletic Center for the first time in two years. Harvard arrived in Brooklyn after a morning match against Princeton, perhaps the biggest rival to the Crimson’s hold on the Northeast Water Polo Conference (NWPC) title. It was an excellent trip to DeNunzio Pool; Harvard took an early lead and led wire-to-wire in pinning a 10-8 loss on the host Tigers.

St. Francis also had a morning contest. MIT came to Brooklyn Heights, and it was not fair fight. The teams were tied two-all with five minutes left in the first period when the Terriers went on a twenty minute blitz, outscoring the Engineers 20-2. When the match ended (mercifully), SFC had claimed a 25-7 win—tied with an 18-goal win in 2006 for the largest difference in a series that dates to 1971.

As happens whenever Harvard comes to town, the Crimson were supported by a small but vocal contingent—one emboldened in recent years as their team has turned the tables on one of their primary tormentors. In the two decades before 2016—when Harvard captured its first NCAA berth in program history—the Terriers dominated the series by a 29-7 mark. And sustained only a single loss in Brooklyn.

[St. Francis College Water Polo 11-Year Home Winning Streak Ends]

Since then, it’s the Crimson who have dominated, winning seven straight since a Terrier home win in 2017. That includes three Harvard wins in 2019, when Ted Minnis’ team went undefeated in the regular season, the first Eastern team to do so.

[Twenty-seven and 0? Wow! But Harvard Men’s Water Polo Has More to Prove]

But this SFC team has zero memory of any of this. At the match, I ran into Tadeu Rodrigues, who played for the Terriers from 2015 until 2019. Rodrigues, who now works for the college, stated the obvious; after almost two years without polo, he didn’t recognize any of the players donning the home dark caps.

Apparently, neither did the Crimson—at least not Baptiste Oliveri, the most dynamic player in the pool. A junior from Marseille, France, the 6-0 attacker registered a game-high four goals, none more important than his score with 51 seconds left that gave SFC a three-goal lead, effectively sealing a 12-10 win.

It's a matter of opinion

This match was a tense as any I’ve attended in Brooklyn—which includes one in 2017 when the referees initially called for multiple penalty shots against the home side after then-head coach Bora Dimitrov inadvertently substituted players during a man-down situation. Or in 2018, when Terrier-killer Austin Sechrest gestured to the crowd after getting red-carded in a 15-14 Crimson win.

[With Patience and Passion, Harvard Men’s Water Polo Grabs Victory Over St. Francis Brooklyn]

The tension was in the slog. With 29 penalties called against St. Francis and 20 for Harvard, offensive consistency was fleeting. The visitors trailed from the opening minutes and never held a lead. The host Terriers blew a number of great opportunities, including three breakaways that were flubbed. Minnis was constantly in the officials’ ears; at one point the game was stopped for 10 minutes as the referees—at the Harvard coach’s insistence—debated the timing of a two-man advantage called against the visitors. The argument was that the SFC desk hadn’t properly signaled for an excluded Harvard player could return. Minnis won that argument; a goal was taken off the board and the first period ended up tied at two.

The parade of exclusion saw six for both teams in the first, eight in the second, 13 in the third and six in the fourth. There were multiple warnings issued; Ilija Duretic, the Terrier coach, was given both a yellow card and a yellow/red warning; Minnis’ assistant coach was red carded.

[There’s Joy in Brooklyn Heights —Ilija Duretic Named St. Francis Brooklyn Men’s Water Polo Coach]

The Harvard view might be they were robbed by the refs. The St. Francis view—which I share—is that they were the better team. They answered every Crimson score with a goal or more, and the game remained close only because the home team did not close it out.

Until they did. After goals by Noah Hodge—the Harvard goalie played out of his cage to score—and Michael Sonsini narrowed the gap to one with 10 seconds remaining, the expected play was a stall to close out the game. That’s not what Dominick Hevesi had in mind. With Hodge out of his cage to pressure the ball, the Terriers’ best scorer, who already had two goals, completed the hat trick with a three-quarter tank lob that electrified the crowd and sealed the win.

It’s been four years since the SFC faithful had that winning feeling. Now, the Terriers need to keep it up; they play at Iona tonight before Princeton comes to town on Saturday. And there’s the Harvard vs. St. Francis rematch between these two teams on October 30 in Cambridge.

If Duretic and his merry band can keep it up, that may decide who’s in first at season’s end.