CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Harvard University men's soccer hosts Holy Cross to open its 2024 season on Saturday, Aug. 31 at 5:00 p.m. (ESPN+) at Jordan Field, coming off a 2023 season in which the Crimson finished in second place in the Ivy League standings.

What to Know: Harvard Highlights

• The Crimson has posted an undefeated mark in each of its last three season openers with a 2-0-1 record over that stretch.
• In 2023, Harvard finished second in the Ivy League standings, marking its highest finish in the conference table since 2015. The Crimson has moved up the league standings in each of the last three years from fourth in 2021 to third in 2022 to second in 2023.
• Harvard returns a trio of All-Ivy selections from last season, including senior center back Jan Riecke, junior defender Ethan Veghte, and sophomore midfielder Erik Dalaker.
• The Crimson brings back 12 of its 16 student-athletes who recorded a point in 2023.
• In the Ivy League Preseason Poll, the Crimson earned the No. 3 position behind only first-place Penn and second-place Yale.
• Senior defenders Jan Riecke and Ludovico Rollo will serve the Crimson as captains in 2024. Riecke has started all 50 of the Crimson's games over the last three seasons.
• Harvard returns four student-athletes who have played in 40 or more career games in seniors Jan Riecke (50), Sam Bjarnason (48), Kristján Gunnarson (47), and Marko Isakovic (43).
• The Crimson features three goalkeepers who have made starts over the last two seasons. Junior Lucian Wood made 16 starts in 2023, posting a 1.44 GAA and two shutouts while sophomore Nicholas Willen notched a clean sheet in one start last season. Junior Cullen MacNeil – who tallied two shutouts in three starts in 2022 – returns from injury after missing the 2023 season.
• Harvard's Class of 2028 making its Crimson debut in 2024 includes six first-years – Alexander Castel, Nayan Das, Tim Langenbahn, Shane Lonergan, Xavier Tanyi, and Phoenix Wooten.
• Harvard holds a 16-1-2 edge in the all-time series with Holy Cross.
• Holy Cross has notched a 1-1-0 record thus far in 2024. The Crusaders fell to Sacred Heart in their season opener, 4-2, before topping Merrimack, 3-0.

What to Know: Outside the Lines

• Senior Sam Bjarnason serves as the President of the Harvard Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and has represented Harvard at Ivy League SAAC events. Bjarnason earned selection as the male representative for the Ivy League for the NCAA Leadership Forum in November 2024. A volunteer at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, he is writing a senior thesis on potential improvements to the U.S. electoral system from a quantitative perspective.
• Sophomore Erik Dalaker serves as the Co-Chair for the Coalition for Global Affairs at Harvard's Institute of Politics, President of the Harvard Nordic Club, and as a Student Ambassador for the Center for International Development. Fluent in seven languages – Norwegian, English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Swedish, and Danish – Dalaker spent two months in the summer of 2024 in Jordan, continuing his Arabic studies, while interning at a local Jordanian political think tank.
• Senior Edwin Dominguez got engaged to his girlfriend in the spring of 2024. The two plan to marry in the fall of 2025.
• Senior Kristján Gunnarsson spent the summer of 2024 working in strategy and business development. He serves as an active member of the Harvard College Events Board, the group that plans school concerts which have featured artists such as Swae Lee and Jeremih.
• Sophomore Yuta Hata spent two months in Hong Kong during the summer of 2024 completing an internship that involved replicating and simulating robotic arms virtually.
• Senior Marko Isakovic – a national champion in math in Serbia as a youth – enjoys solving difficult math problems by thinking outside the box, using pattern recognition, and other methods – a mindset that also serves him well on the pitch.
• Sophomore Ben Kelly works for Harvard Student Agencies (HSA), a non-profit that raises money for students' financial aid as the largest student-run organization in the world.
• Junior Rustin Khosravi spent the summer of 2024 in Barcelona, attending the running of the bulls in Pamplona and fly fishing in the Pyrenees Mountains.
• Junior Cullen MacNeil has involved himself with the Harvard Innovation Labs' Student i-Lab, exploring several ventures including a device to help users manage phone addictions. A volunteer at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, MacNeil worked as a product manager at a startup called Scuba Aquatics in the summer of 2024.
• Junior Nicholas Nyquist spent the summer of 2024 interning at a venture capital firm called nFront Ventures. Nyquist helped the firm source more than 200 companies over two months and helped the group expand its investor network in Europe.
• Senior Jan Riecke led a sustainability competition for high school students around the world for the Harvard Undergraduate Clean Energy Group. Riecke has also worked for the World Economic Forum's Centre for Trustworthy Technology.
• Senior Ludovico Rollo – who owns a vinyl record collection – is writing a senior thesis on the gut microbiome.
• Junior Zachary Sardi-Santos spent two months in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the summer of 2024 through Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Brazil Summer Internship Program. Sardi-Santos interned at the Minsterio Publico of Rio de Janeiro, helping to solve public sector challenges. At Harvard, Sardi-Santos – a member of the Harvard Hillel and a tour guide for Harvard Student Agencies – also served as the male lead (Jason) in the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club musical, Medea, in the spring of 2024.
• Sophomore Will Sherwood is a member of STAHR (Student Astronomers at Harvard-Radcliffe) as well as an editor for The Harvard Crimson.
• Sophomore Dylan Tellado completed an internship with Nashville SC of Major League Soccer as a data scientist and software engineer. Tellado worked on constructing a model to quantify each team's control over the field at more than three million timestamps per game.
• Junior Matus Vician – a pre-med student with an interest in orthopedic surgery – completed research at the Harvard Lab for Skeletal and Muscular Biology in the summer of 2024, measuring the metabolic cost of arm swinging during walking and running. A volunteer at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, he spent the summer of 2023 volunteering in Vietnam with Coach for College.
• Junior Lucian Wood produced, wrote, and directed a short film – a 10-minute, dialogue-driven narrative that focuses on love, frustration, and mental health – in the summer of 2024. Wood is hoping to premier the film, titled "I See You," at national and international film festivals in the spring of 2025.

Next Up

Harvard plays at the University of Rhode Island on Thursday, Sept. 5 at 7:00 p.m. (ESPN+).