Sasner: Player of the Year

The season is over for the Harvard women's hockey team, which can mean only one thing. The dressing room under Bright Center is cleaned out, the team goals are assessed, the team picture is taken and the residuals--in the form of individual honors--roll in.

And for the Crimson, it has been a particularly good year in terms of the team goals. Harvard repeated as Ivy League Champions and also won the Ivy League tournament. And, for the' second year in a row, the Crimson lost to the eventual ECAC champions. Last year, it was UNH; this year, Northeastern.

It also has been a good year for individual honors. Three Harvard players--Co-Captain Julie Sasner, sophomore Char Joslin, and leading goaltender Jennifer White--made first-team All-Ivy. Junior Brita Lind made second-team All-Ivy for the second consecutive year.

"I'm so happy for Saz and Jen and Char," Lind said. "They definitely deserved it. I always though [White] was the best goalie in the Ivy League, hands down."

"I'm so excited for Jen," said senior Jane Kalinski. "I think she deserved it last year."

And the big one--Ivy League Player of the Year--went to Sasner, who beat out Princeton super-frosh Mollie Marcoux for the honor.

"No one deserves it more than she [Sasner] does," Kalinski said. "She came up with all of our big goals. She is well-respected in the league and people know she's a team leader."

"It's a pleasant end to my career, to go out with a bang," Sasner said.

But the second-year co-captain is a bit less subdued than most might think about being voted the best performer in Ivy League women's hockey this season.

"To tell you the truth, I try not to put too much stock in these sorts of awards," Sasner said. "At the beginning of the year, my expectations were to be the Ivy League champions, to win the Ivy League tournament and to do as well as we could in the ECAC's. My expectation is not to win an award like this."

Joining the three Harvardians on the All-Ivy first team were three freshmen--Marcoux, Cornell's Mindy Bixby and Dartmouth's Judy Parish.

Marcoux, the Ivy League's leading scorer with 14 goals and 18 assists, picked up Ivy Rookie of the Year honors, breaking a streak of three consecutive times that Harvard skaters have claimed the award.