Silva Takes M. Soccer's Fourth Rookie Award

The Harvard men's soccer team firmly established itself as the vanguard of the future of Ivy League soccer yesterday when freshman Kevin Silva became the fourth Harvard freshman to take home the Rookie of the Week award this season.

Silva follows Will Kohler (11/1), David Bonita (10/18) and T.J. Carella (10/4). The four wins is the most of any Ivy League team, although Princeton has three: midfielder Andre Parris (9/27, 10/11) and back Andrew Lewis (10/25).

But the year's big prize went to Columbia (6-1-0), who grabbed the Ivy League's automatic NCAA berth with its 4-2 defeat of defending champion Dartmouth in New York Saturday. Lions forward Rikki Dadason tallied his second straight hat trick in the clinching victory and earned the Player of the Week award for the second straight week and the third time this season.

Dadason finished the season with an amazing 24 goals and five assists.

Both Princeton and Dartmouth are still considered candidates for the NCAA tournament, for which the selections will be announced later today. While the Tiger (6-1-0) are considered a secure bet, the Big Green (2-5-0) would be invited only on reputation.

On the women's side, Dartmouth has been invited to the NCAA tournament--the Ivy League's first representative since 1986.

Undefeated and unscored upon in Ivy League play, the 14th-ranked Big Green will travel to Amherst to play Connecticut in the first round of the four-team Northeast Regional on Saturday.

In more examples of out-of-whack tournament seedings, Brown (5-2-0) is seeding fifth at the ECAC tournament while Cornell (6-1-0) is seeded sixth. The mystery is why Brown, which had to defeat Harvard in overtime to secure is berth, is placed higher than Cornell.