Athlete of the Week: Angela Ruggiero

Since Saturday, defenseman and junior captain Angela Ruggiero has shared the Harvard women’s hockey record of five goals in a single game. Granted, the performance came against lowly Wayne State, but it no doubt raised some eyebrows across the country.

For Ruggiero, all that scoring was simply an exciting way to rebound from a lengthy winter break.

“It was a fun game,” she said. “There were a lot of opportunities to jump into the play.”

Regardless of what the Warriors hoped to accomplish on Saturday, its most noticeable achievement in its 9-0 defeat was bringing out the best in Ruggiero and Harvard through its physical style of play.

“When it gets physical it makes you want to go harder,” Ruggiero said. “That’s what I did today. That’s what our team did today.”

A case in point was in the third period Saturday, when a Wayne State player tried to check Ruggiero into the boards. The hit failed to slow her down—if anything it caused her to accelerate—and she did not stop until the puck was in the net.

“She didn’t stop her feet,” said Harvard coach Katey Stone after the win. “People had to play at her level today. She brought the puck in on the forehand and found the seams.”

Though official stats were not kept, Ruggiero likely spent more time possessing the puck on the attack than any of the Wayne State forwards—maybe more than all of them combined. The Warriors had no more luck getting through Ruggiero on the defensive end than they did stopping her on the offensive end.

“She did a tremendous job in all zones of the ice today,” Stone said.

Such has been the case for the entirety of Ruggiero’s career, during which the Crimson has done almost nothing but win. In three seasons with Harvard, her teams have gone a combined 66-7-3, including the 33-1-0 national championship team in 1999 from which only she and captain Jennifer Botterill remain.

Consistency has earned the No. 1 Crimson the respect of its opponents. Princeton coach Jeff Kampersal likened the Crimson to the Soviet Union’s Red Army teams after watching tapes of Harvard’s power play in preparation for Saturday’s game.

While comparisons to history’s greatest hockey teams are heavy praise, an NCAA championship is the Crimson’s primary goal. To get there, Harvard can’t play down to its weaker opponents and then expect to turn it on against the likes of defending champion Minnesota-Duluth or longtime nemesis Dartmouth. With her five-goal effort on Saturday, Ruggiero once again exemplified the requisite effort of a national champion.