W. Lax Starts Uncertain Season

In the 1997 edition of the Harvard women's lacrosse team, youth will be served. A lot.

Nine of the 19 players on the varsity are new to the program, as four players from last year's squad graduated, and seven either quit or were cut. So when Harvard opens its season at Boston College on Wednesday, not much will be familiar.

Or will it? After all, between the 1995 and '96 seasons, the Crimson lost seven players, six of whom were starters. Therefore one can say that the massive turnover this year is nothing special for Harvard. However the team knows that there is still work to be done.

"This weekend is going to be really important," Harvard coach Carole Kleinfelder said. "We have no idea what we're going to be like."

The Crimson will travel down to William and Mary for two days, playing exhibition games against a host of colleges as well as the U.S. National team (see related story). It will be Harvard's first experience against other teams and in full-strength scrimmages.

The team has been able to count on one thing so far--the weather. Thanks to this year's mild February, Harvard has been able to practice on Ohiri Field since late last week, whereas last season the Crimson was locked inside the claustrophobic Briggs Athletic Center practically until spring break.

As a result, Harvard has had a chance to work on its biggest question mark of the preseason--its offense. The team's top four goal and point scorers graduated, three of whom were attackers.

The only double-digit goal scorer from 1996 left is junior Honor MacNaughton, who will be joined by senior Liz Hren at attack. Both players are fast but did not consistently score until the end of the season. Other than them, southpaw freshman Kim Weeks will probably see some action at attack.

Going into the 1996 season, Harvard faced the same difficulty, as the top three scorers graduated. That year's senior class took over the offensive responsibility, tallying two-thirds of the team's goals.

"It's sort of hard to see who's going to score," said sophomore midfielder Liz Schoyer, one of only two four-year players on the team. "As long as Honor steps it up, I think we'll be fine."

Still, it took a month for the 1996 team to get itself going. The final product was good enough--Harvard finished 8-6 (3-3 Ivy), making it the finals of the ECAC Tournament and earning a No. 12 national ranking--but over the first six games of the year, the Crimson was 1-5.

"I think that last year we got kind of frazzled and expected a lot of things from the beginning," co-captain goalie Shana Barghouti said.

Harvard's strength should be on the defensive end. Co-captain Daphne Clark, junior Holly Rogers, junior Keren Gudeman and senior Chris Shortsleeve are all back, and junior Boston College transfer Claudia Asano and freshman Annie Johnson will factor in as well.

Schoyer, Harvard's leading returner in assists, will head the midfield, backed by sophomores Laura Dahmen, Sarah Davis and Clare Parker, the latter of whom will be out for two weeks with an injury.

The Competition

In recent years, the Princeton Tigers have held a stranglehold over the rest of the Ivy League, sharing three out of the last four league titles and going to the Final Four five straight years.

However, the Tigers lost many of their best players to graduation, including goaltender Erin O'Neill and attackers Abigail Gutstein and Lisa Rebane, the latter of whom was the 1996 Ivy League Player of the Year. Returning is junior Cristi Samaras, whose 72 overall points led the Ivies last year, and senior Carter Marsh, both of whom were First Team All-Ivy.

For the rest of the league, the bag is mixed. Cornell was winless in the league last year and Penn lost top players Amy Shapiro and Jessica Gilhorn to graduation. Otherwise, it is hard to say who of Brown, Harvard, Yale or Dartmouth is the clear favorite to challenge Princeton.

"Princeton lost a tremendous amount of players," Kleinfelder said. "There's a lot more parity this year."