Icewomen Led by 'The Sniper', or Was it 'Das Hammer?'

To some she's "Das Hammer" and to others she's "The Sniper," but to Harvard women's hockey coach John Dooley, she's "the best forward" he's ever coached.

"Sandra Whyte has tremendous speed, acceleration, scoring ability, and puck-handling skills," Dooley says. "She's the best forward in the Ivy League."

Dooley has only praise for his star sophomore forward's skills, but those skills are only a small part of what she brings to the team.

"[Whyte] is a team player and a key motivator for the team," Harvard Co-Captain Martina Albright says. "Her excitement on and off the ice were infectious to the team. It's her leadership abilities that got her elected Co-Captain for next year's team. It's very unusual for a sophomore to be in that role, but she filled it extremely well."

Whyte had a big role to fill at the start of this season as the Crimson lost five seniors from its 1989 Ivy League Championship squad. Lacking this experience, Harvard fell to fourth place in the league behind Cornell, Princeton and Dartmouth. The Big Red swept through the schedule with surprising ease, coasting to an undefeated record.

The Crimson faced the challenge of opening the Ivy League tournament against the top-seeded Big Red, but Whyte and her teammates weren't about to back down to the undefeated Ithacans.

The major factor in the Crimson's 5-2 upset of Cornell, Dooley says, was "the intensity that Sandra brought into the Ivy tournament. Her intensity pushed her teammates up a couple of levels."

Whyte's hat trick and assist also helped.

Capping off what she terms "the best hockey the team played all season" the next night, Whyte tallied four more points against Princeton as the Crimson captured the tournament title and a berth in the ECAC tournament.

Albright and Sue Cullinane, who will join Whyte as a co-captain next season, agree that the ECAC tournament game was the most memorable game of the season. Although the Crimson was bounced from the tournament with an 8-3 loss to Providence in the first round, the players were pleased with their performance that night, which was catalyzed by Whyte.

Most of Harvard's players were wary of the Friars, who hail from a large recruiting school with a lot more depth. Harvard was skating with two lines and three defenders, while the Friars had three lines and three defensive pairs.

"We were apprehensive going into the game," Cullinane says. "She took the puck end-to-end in the first period to give us a 1-0 lead."

"Her goal gave us a lot of confidence and convinced us that we could play with a team like Providence," Albright says. "It's just another example of Sandra leading on the ice through what she does."

Whyte is always the first on and last off the ice. Occasionally, Dooley holds an optional practice so that his team--especially those players like Whyte who average over 40 minutes a game--could get a well deserved rest. But there's no stopping Whyte from suiting up whenever she gets the chance. She attended optional practices and improved her strength through long hours in the weight room even though Coach Dooley told her that it wasn't necessary.

Coach Dooley thinks the secret to Whyte's leadership is "her love for the game and her commitment to it. She's a tremendous worker and she works at her game like any great athlete does. She has great skills, but what makes her great is that she's always working to perfect those skills."

Dooley is quick to add though that Whyte is willing to patiently help out her teammates, although this may have been a factor in her not repeating as a First Team All-Ivy player this year.

"She should've been first team this year as well," Dooley says, "but people get caught up on points and Sandra's humility made her dish off and share the points even though she probably could have scored at will in the games that we were clearly winning."

On the team's trip to Europe over Christmas break this year, Whyte displayed another element of her game that earned her the nickname, "Das Hammer." The team traveled to Switzerland to play in a tournament against teams from Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Unlike women's college hockey in the U.S., this tournament allowed full body checking, a skill that Whyte has been forced to keep under wraps in the Ivies.

During a game against Sweden, Whyte crunched an opponent into the boards with a clean check that broke the Swede's collarbone. At 5-ft., 6-in., no one is going to confuse Whyte with Kevan Melrose, but for safety's sake, opponents better start ducking when they see number 10 coming.

Although Whyte proved she can give a mean hit, her style of play is strictly finesse, earning her more popular nickname, "Sniper." Albright says the name comes from Whyte's blazing speed and her ability to poke away a puck and fire it home for a goal.

The Sniper is shooting for the top, and I pity the team that gets in her way. If anyone can.