Sectionals 2025

We started off sectionals with tough losses to Northeastern, BU, and BC, leaving us with our backs against the wall. Despite starting off down 3-1, we came back to dominate UMass Lowell 15-7, keeping our season alive. This left us with a game-to-go against Harvard: the winner would continue to New England Regionals and the loser’s season would end early in bitter fashion. As you all know, Harvard is a familiar foe and rival for us, with many of our recent games with them going to Universe Point. 

Early on, a 40 yard huck from Kyle Roke ‘26 sailed over its intended target’s head, before Emeka Echezona ‘24 flew out of nowhere, making a full layout catch in the back of the endzone. This was the game’s first break, giving us a 4-2 lead. After two more breaks for us and one more Harvard break, on many hard fought points, we extended our lead to 7-4, with 3 of these goals coming on Kyle's hucks. However, our excitement soon turned to anguish, as Harvard’s stifling zone defense forced turnover after turnover, despite many layout catches, layout blocks, and even a few completed crossfield hammers from our team. Harvard held, and then broke three times in a row, to take half 8-7. They started the second half with three more goals in a row, despite many MIT Ds, to extend their lead to 11-7, on seven straight goals. To make matters worse, a few ill-timed injuries meant that we were short numbered — Vincent Fan ’24, Jacob Daitzman ’25, Kyle, and Rich Wang ’27 would be handling every point for the rest of the game. Down 11-7, with a few minutes to soft cap, and less than 20 minutes to hard cap, and MIT not having scored in 45 minutes, it would have been easy to count us out. 

However, we converted a hard-fought 10 minute point, and then a quick 1 minute point on a Harvard dropped pull, to cut the lead to 11-9 with 6 minutes to hard cap. At this point, needing a miracle, Coach Axis Sivitz put 2 freshmen on the line, Zach Perry ‘28 and Ethan Phan ‘28, along with 5 veterans. He called out a new defensive set: our so called “BU Zone,” named for the team that played it against us three weeks ago. After watching film of that game, we’ve spent around 20 minutes per practice for the past three weeks learning the set, and it remained in our back pocket as a last resort. For the final three points, we kept the same group of 7 players, and ‘BU Zone’ stifled Harvard, with the three handler-defenders denying all dumps, and the four downfield defenders executing the zone to perfection. Offensively, all 7 contributed big plays, while remaining cool and collected, such as an audacious 35 yard cross field blade from Kyle to Ethan, and a leaping catch from Rich over two defenders. So, we scored to make it 11-10 two minutes before hard cap, and broke again to reach universe point. This was the situation we’d been dreaming about all year: 11-11, universe point, game-to-go vs. Harvard. Vincent seized the moment, making a brilliant fully horizontal layout D, before the offense punched in the goal, with Andrew Okyere ‘25 throwing a short inside flick to Kyle in the endzone, who made a layout catch for the win. Thus, Grim improves to 3-0 vs Harvard this year, and 4-1 in the past two years, with all four wins coming on frantic comebacks completed on universe points. And, our season continues, with Regionals in three weeks.

Apr 13