Hockeywomen Looking for Respect

For the past few seasons, women's ice hockey team has gone into a season with one major goal: to break into the top tier of college teams in the country.

While the team (11-11-2 overall, 4-6-1 Ivy) didn't quite realize that goal during the 1993-94 season, falling victim to the bug of inconsistency, it did set the stage for future attempts at the status.

"I think that the key with this team was its potential," co-captain Francie Walton says. "We had a lot of young players with exceptional talent who simply needed to get experience. They did that, and I think that the team should be ready to reach the next level in the future years."

Going into this season, the team thought it might have the chance to break into that group right away. The team had lost only one player to graduation, and was gaining a number of recruits from the local area who were potential stars.

"We were really excited," Walton said. "I can remember being in practice at the beginning of the season, looking around, and suddenly realizing that for the first time since I had been here, we had three lines who could play. That was an exciting moment."

The team's initial excitement seemed justified when the team ran away with its first four games of the season. The squad demolished Minnesota-Duluth, 6-1; St. Cloud, 12-0; Brown, 3-2; and Boston College, 4-2. All those schools except Brown fielded club teams.

With a 4-0 record and heaps of confidence, the team then plunged into the regular portion of the season, only to get a rude awakening. First, Dartmouth bruised any Crimson delusions of infallibility by tying the team, 2-2. Then St. Lawrence, North eastern and Princeton utterly destroyed any such pretensions, beating Harvard in successive games, 7-4, 4-1 and 4-3.

The team managed to recover in time to destroy a weak Yale team, 9-1, but then fell to Brown in overtime, 3-2.

Harvard had a 2-4-1 record in regular season games (the club games don't count), and was looking for answers.

"I think we were a little bit confused at that point in the year," Walton said. "We came out extremely fired up, and then sort of lost it."

Whatever the team lost, it quickly found again, in the middle of December. The team mounted its longest winning streak in four years, winning eight straight games, starting with Bowdoin on December 10. The team then beat, in successive order, Colby, 6-0; RIT, 1-0; Middlebury twice, 7-0 and 4-2; and Cornell, 6-0.

Suddenly, the team was 10-4-1 and looking the prospect of its best season in years right in the eye.

But it was not to be.

The team lost to Princeton at home on February 5, and, with its momentum shaken, took a big dive. After beating Colby on February 13, 7-3, it lost to Northeastern in the Beanpot, 7-3, tied Providence, 3-3, and then lost its last three games of the season--to Brown, 3-1; Dartmouth, 3-1; and Northeastern, 3-1, to close out the year.

"My one big regret about the season is that we finished the season out on such a bad note, particularly against league rivals like Brown and Dartmouth," Walton says. "We were just worn out, I think. It sort of messed up our standing in the league."

Perhaps, but the least the Crimson cam take solace in the fact that it will be more than ready to take vengeance on the league next year. The squad will return its two leading scorers, freshman Allison Mleczko (31 goals, 19 assists) and sophomore Stacy Kellogg (18 goals, 16 assists), along with its star goalie, junior Erin Villotte (510 saves,.907 save percentage).

"It sounds weird, but this year was about next year as much as anything," Walton says.