Stickwomen Nab Fifth Shutout of Year, Continue Terrorizing Defenseless Foes

Call in Amnesty International because the Harvard field hockey team is on a sadistic splurge, torturing defenseless opponents with barbarous cruelty.

The stick women throttled Cornell, 3-0, Sunday at Soldiers Field to lift the Crimson record to 6-1-1 overall (2-0 in Ivy play) this season. The diminutives Big Red has yet to claim its first league victory in any season.

Not content with merely defeating its opponents, Harvard usually denies its foes the dignity of a goal. The Crimson defense has blanked five teams in eight outings while leading the stick women to their best start in recent history.

Operating on the premise that once is enough, the Harvard defenders refuse the opposition the follow-up shots necessary to score off a goaltender as stingy as the Crimson's Juliet Lamont.

Led by senior halfback Maureen Finn, the defense blocks out in front of the net much the same way hoopsters block out for a basketball rebound.

Named Ivy Player of the Week for her performance last weekend at Penn. Lamont positions herself so well that she rarely has difficulty stopping the first shot, and on those infrequent occasions when she has to worry about the rebound, her reflexes usually take care of that, too.

Lamont's vigilance is made easier by the knowledge that her offense can produce. Though it often takes over a half to get untracked, the Crimson attack nearly always come through, failing to score only once this year.

Again 4 Cornell, Harvard struck early when Co-Captain Kate Martin deflected a pass from fellow Co-Captain Finn into the back of the Big Red net less than four minutes into the contest. Finn's pass might have gotten by Cornell netminder Shea Maultsby without the deflection, but the pass originated outside the penalty area and thus would not have counted had it crossed into the goal line untouched.

With less than 10 minutes remaining in the half, the stick women notched their second tally when an Andy Mainelli-Bombi Taylor give-and-go in the right corner set up a Mainelli centering pass. Martin slid the pass to Jennifer White, who slapped the ball back into the right side of the net.

The stick women picked up their final score five minutes later, when White hit a penalty corner to Martin, who returned the ball to White for the slap-shot goal.

Martin, who is recovering from a cold, came out of the game soon after the final tally, and before the game's end Crimson Coach Edic Mabrey had substituted freely.

Mabrey may get to use more reserves today, because Boston College arrives at Soldiers Field this afternoon at 3 p.m. If the past is any indication, the Eagles might be an endangered species.

THE NOTEBOOK: This weekend's rains forced the Cornell game to be postponed for a day. Eager to get home to Ithaca, the Big Red originally wanted to play on Saturday's puddle-covered field. "Tell me you want to play in this," Mabrey said of the stormy weather. "You've got to be on drugs."