Icewomen Nab Third-Straight Ivy Championship

The Harvard women's ice hockey team defeated Princeton on Saturday, 4-1. Or was it 7-1?

The Crimson, which had three goals called back, won the Ivy League Championship for the third straight year at Bright Hockey Center in front of 250 spectators.

"It's the first game I've ever been in which three goals were called back," Harvard Coach John Dooley said.

It's not as if the Crimson (15-6-1 overall, 8-0-1 Ivy) needed them anyway, with defender Char Joslin showing up the entire Tiger squad even as she was lying down.

Joslin, controlling the puck amidst a swarm of Princeton players, was knocked on her stomach in front of the net. Dragging two Princeton players with her, she slid towards the goal and managed to get her stick on the puck and poke it in to give Harvard a 1-0 lead going into the third period.

"I was pulling a Lane MacDonald," Joslin said, referring to the goal that the Harvard men's captain scored kneeling down in the Beanpot game against Boston University. "[Kate Flather, Catherine Wolfram and Lauren Messmore] did a great job of keeping the puck in the zone."

"I think Charlotte Joslin and [freshman Bev] Stickles are really outstanding players," Princeton Coach Bob Ewell said. "Our success has been scoring goals. We usually generate a lot of shots, and they did a lot to shut down our players."

Harvard Tri-Captain Jen White faced only 12 shots on goal as compared to the Tigers' Kari Rosencranz, who had to contend with 36. Even a ploy on the part of Princeton to move leading scorer Molly Marcoux back to second line to exploit supposedly weaker opposition proved fruitless, save for a tally late in the third period.

"The second team could skate with her," White said. "We didn't have to change lineups."

The third period got off to a raucous start with the Crimson scoring four goals in a span of less than five minutes, although two of them were called back. A goal at 21 seconds into the period was disallowed because the officials ruled that Tri-Captain Brita Lind kicked the puck. Lind wasted no time griping, however. She scored a legal goal two minutes later off a deflection of freshman Bev Stickles' shot.

A goal 30 seconds later was called back because freshman Sandra Whyte was ruled to have touched the puck after it crossed the red line.

Lind again took matters into her own hands, scoring at the 4:03 mark with help from White, who notched her second assist of the season.

Celebration

The first call-back of the game came in the second period, when a tally from junior Martina Albright was deemed a hand-goal.

"[The three call-backs] just pumped us up even more," Whyte said.

With less than a minute to play, Tri-Captain Julia Trotman cleared the puck out of the Harvard zone, scoring an empty-net goal in the process, and the celebration began.

As the band played and the champagne flowed, the players took to the ice with their richly deserved trophy--their third consecutive Ivy League title--savoring a victory which must have been as sweet as any they've experienced, especially for the senior members of the team.

"I think we've really proved something to the league because we were voted fourth at the beginning of the season, and we won the title," Lind said. "And we did it decisively."

"It's so sweet that we won it against Princeton because it's such a huge rivalry," White said.

Harvard hosts Dartmouth in its last regular season game tonight at Bright at 7 p.m.