CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Coming off its 10th consecutive season with 20+ wins, Harvard University men’s water polo is set to begin the 2025 campaign at Blodgett Pool on August 30 as a site for Brown University’s Bruno Classic as part of its 30-game schedule this upcoming fall.
Ted Minnis sits just six wins away from his 300th career victory as head coach of the men’s program as the Crimson enter the 2025 season.
Highlights this year include hosting the Bruno Classic and Harvard Invitational, and two trips to California to compete against reigning national champion the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) and Long Beach State University, before returning later in the season for the Julian Fraser Memorial Tournament.
Offensive threats Dean Strauser and Jack Burghardt are set to return this season, with the goalkeeping duo of Tanner Furtak and Oliver Price also back between the pipes, while Mason Hunt and Jacob Tsotadze will lead the Crimson in 2025.
Harvard opens the year with a four-game weekend at home, facing Bucknell University and Fordham University on Saturday, August 30, before returning Sunday, August 31, to meet Gannon University and Wagner College. The Crimson are 8-3 at the Bruno Classic over the last three seasons. Harvard played Wagner in the season opener last season and cruised to a 17-8 win as Strauser, Burghardt, and Hunt led the offense.
The following weekend, Harvard heads south to Princeton, N.J., for the Princeton Invitational at reigining Northeast Water Polo Conference (NWPC) Champion Princeton University from September 6–7, with opponents and game times yet to be announced.
The Crimson then embarks on its first California road trip of the season from Friday-to-Sunday, September 12-14, visiting national powers UCLA and Long Beach State, before finishing the weekend with California State University-Fullerton and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges across three days in Southern California.
Harvard is set to play the reigning national champions for just the fourth time in program history and the first time since 2022. Harvard is also set to face Long Beach for the first time since the Bruno Classic in 2022, where it fell in a heavily competitive battle to open the season.
After a brief break, Harvard returns to the East Coast for conference play, traveling to New York and New Jersey for a trio of games on Saturday-Sunday, October 4–5, taking on Long Island University, Iona University, and the reigning NWPC champion Tigers of Princeton.
Since 2021, Harvard has only lost one regular-season game against a conference opponent who was not the Princeton Tigers. Boasting a 35–6 conference record over the last four seasons, Harvard has not lost to either Iona or LIU in that span.
A marquee matchup with rival Brown awaits on Saturday, October 11, in Providence before the Crimson return to Blodgett on Sunday, October 12, to host the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in their conference home opener. A much-anticipated rematch from the NWPC semifinals will see Harvard look to avenge a hard-fought loss to Brown in its last meeting against its Ivy League institution rival.
Harvard will host the annual Harvard Invitational from Saturday-Sunday, October 18-19, welcoming Wagner, Salem University and George Washington University to Cambridge for a three-game weekend.
The Crimson will make their second trip west from Friday-Sunday, October 24-26, for the Julian Fraser Memorial Tournament in Santa Clara, Calif., squaring off with University of the Pacific, Pepperdine University, the United States Air Force Academy, and host Santa Clara University over three days before returning home to finish out the conference slate.
Back on the East Coast, Harvard closes out the regular season with six games in November. The team travels across the Charles River to MIT on Saturday, November 1, before returning to Blodgett that evening to close out the season series with Brown at 7:00 p.m.
The final homestand of the year includes back-to-back matchups with Long Island and Iona on Saturday, November 8, followed by a final showdown against Princeton on Sunday, November 9, before the NWPC Championship.
The 2025 NWPC Championship is set for Friday-Sunday, November 21-23, at Brown’s Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center in Providence, R.I., where the Crimson will look to claim their first conference crown since 2019.
Information courtesy Harvard University Athletics Communications
