Princeton Bests Stick women

Whether the Harvard field hockey team's near-perfect season will be rewarded with an Ivy championship or an NCAA tournament berth now depends on five more games and the whim of a committee.

Defending Ivy champion Princeton muddied the Crimson's future by handing the stick women their first league setback, 1-0, Saturday in New Jersey. For Harvard to gain a share of the Ivy crown, the 5-0 Tigers must bow to Dartmouth and the 3-1 Crimson-must stop both Brown and Yale.

The NCAA tournament picture is even more complicated, with the stick women (8-2-2 overall) in a tight race with the University of Massachusetts (10-2-1) for the second of a probable two invitations to be offered Northeastern schools. The Minutemen, ranked eighth in the country, tied Harvard Thursday.

All this confusion stems from one penalty corner in Saturday's Princeton game. In an even battle, the stick women mustered 12 penalty corners, but the Tigers did them one better. And 13 proved a very unlucky number for Harvard.

Princeton used the same play for all of its short corners, and three minutes into the second half, it worked.

Sue McCarter hit the corner to Angie Demmis at the top of the penalty circle. Demmis stopped the ball, then flipped it to link Martha Russo. Russo's shot slipped past the right goalpost and into the twines at the 3:15 mark to give the Tigers the day's only score.

A rush of penalty corners in the final minutes gave the Crimson the opportunity to tie the contest, but netminder Pam Smith never yielded, becoming only the third goaltender this season to blank the Harvard attack.

"If we had three more minutes we would have scored," Crimson goalie Juliet Lamont said. "It's too bad that we didn't have that kind of pressure the whole game."

Co-Captain Kate Martin compared the Crimson's loss to Princeton with Dartmouth's 1-0 defeat at Harvard's hands last week. Both were even struggles on bumpy fields, with the winning team beating the loser to the ball.

Princeton used its edge in quickness to good advantage, several times setting up scoring opportunities from the field. The Crimson stayed in the game thanks only to its trademark defense, a unit that has shut out the opposition in half the team's games.

"They told us we were the best team they've played all year," Martin said.

That's a strong compliment coming from a team that has squared off against fourth-ranked Penn State and sixth-ranked Delaware. Harvard can only hope that the NCAA tournament selection committee agrees.