By Scott Brinton
The women's soccer team would play its archrival, Columbia, at Harvard's Ohiri Field for the title.
The championship was a huge deal for the Crimson. Harvard had not won an Ivy League title in women's soccer since the 1990s, while Columbia had proved itself to be a powerhouse squad in recent years, having captured the Ivy League championship in 2007. Harvard's only Ivy League loss last fall was to Columbia.
Harvard's band came to provide fanfare for the title game, and Harvard's lacrosse, softball, field hockey and basketball teams turned out to cheer for the home team.
In the midst of it all was an unassuming, but highly talented defender from East Meadow, Lindsey Kowal, a freshman accounting major who played in the East Meadow Soccer Club from second grade until she graduated from East Meadow High School with honors last June.
Kowal, who started in 17 of Harvard's 18 games last fall, played for the Dynamite premier team while in East Meadow, as well as in the Olympic Development Program's regional pool from ninth through 11th grades. Soccer Buzz magazine named her one of the nation's Top 125 recruits in the fall of her senior year in high school.
To be playing in the Ivy League championship so early in her college career was a dream realized for Kowal. At the start of the season, she could hardly have imagined it. "As a freshman," she said, "you never know what you're getting yourself into. You're just hoping things will go your way. The coaches and the girls were so welcoming."
In the end, Harvard won the championship 2-1 in double-overtime. The squad prevailed on penalty kicks. Kowal recently received her championship ring, capping off her freshman season, and what was, in so many ways, a perfect year for the 18-year-old.
"It's nice as a freshman coming in and winning [the championship] right away," Kowal said. To top it all off, Kowal was awarded All-Ivy honors for her contributions to Harvard's defense. She had one assist on the season.
Kowal and her parents, Nancy and Bruce, credited the East Meadow Soccer Club with guiding her through the hyper-competitive world of youth soccer. "The families we were with, we had a good time," Nancy Kowal said. "It was really a good part of our life."
Nancy said that she and her husband, a social-studies teacher and psychologist, are incredibly close with their daughter, in large part because they spent so much time together on weekends traveling to tournaments from New York to Florida. The Kowals also have a son, Daniel, 22, a baseball player who graduated from the University of Scranton with an accounting degree.
Nancy and Bruce attended most of their daughter's college games last season, including the championship. The game, Nancy said, "went down to the wire. It was so exciting. We just can't believe the whole thing."
To play for Harvard, Kowal had to first be admitted to the nation's top university on the merits of her high school academic record. At East Meadow High, she maintained a 96 grade point average, and was a member of the National, Science and Spanish honor societies, as well as the badminton team, the Environmental Club and the Key Club. "I was looking at a lot of Ivy League schools," Kowal said. "I really, really wanted to go to a great institution."
Nancy said her daughter "was never afraid to work hard. She just has such a strong work ethic, no matter what she's doing."
Brian Garcia of Babylon served as the parent administrator, or coach, for the East Meadow Dynamite. Kowal, he said, "was unbelievable, her work ethic. She was very smart. She was able to anticipate plays. She just had a strong knowledge of the game."
Garcia said all 12 of the Dynamite's graduating seniors went on to play soccer in college, and all received a grant or scholarship to play, including his daughter, Brianna, who now plays for Penn State.
Kowal said her coaches and trainers played a major role in her success, in particular Chris Smith, who taught her the fundamentals of the game. Most of all, though, she credited her parents. "They have been so supportive," she said. "They were at so many away games, so many tournaments. We were out of state. We played in so many tournaments where we had to fly. The money and time that they put into me playing soccer, I can't imagine it."
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