W. Hockey Returns to ECACs, Plants Seeds for Next Season

Rebuild: 1. to build anew; 2. to restore to a previous condition; 3. to repair or remodel extensively, as by taking apart and reconstructing, often with new parts.

For the Harvard women's ice hockey team, the 1997-98 season marked the end of the rebuilding process. The previous condition to which the Crimson hopes to return is the form it held over a stretch from 1987 to 1991, in which Harvard captured the regular-season Ivy League title or the Ivy Tournament title every season.

The new parts that have been added include three Olympians--two of them gold-medal winners--one Canadian National Team member and a pair of rookies that took the ECAC by storm this season. Despite missing some of those parts this year, Harvard (14-16, 6-14 ECAC, 2-6 Ivy) established itself as a team on the brink of excellence in the world of women's college ice hockey.

After missing the playoffs in each of the past two seasons, Harvard returned to the postseason in 1998 and came within seven minutes of upsetting the eventual national champion New Hampshire Wildcats. In this, the first year in which the NCAA crowned a women's ice hockey national champion, Harvard gave a strong indication that it could vie for the crown before the end of the second millennium.

"I think when you play through everything we've played through, it builds character and it builds team unity, so that you have something beyond winning," said co-captain-elect Claudia Asano. "The newcomers and the players who are coming back next year are going to bond quickly because of that."

The Crimson, after all, entered the season shorthanded. Harvard's all-time leading scorer A.J. Mleczko '97-'99, a member of the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic Team, took her second year off to participate in the Nagano Games. Tammy Shewchuck '00-'01, who broke Mleczko's single-season school scoring record last season with 53 points in her rookie season, also took the year off to train with the Canadian National Team.

Harvard's 1998 roster included only one senior, goaltender and co-captain Jen Bowdoin, and she was recovering from off-season hip surgery. Moreover, the Crimson had only 10 skaters return from an undermanned 1996-97 squad and welcomed six freshman and two transfers to Cambridge.

"We were a very young team that had inexperience but a lot of talent," Asano said. "Both our younger and older players knew what our losses would be like, and we knew we would have to strive higher and play better."

Harvard was not expected to do much this season. But apparently no one told the players that.

A pair of rookies emerged from the ranks to steal the thunder from ECAC powerhouses Northeastern and UNH. Kiirsten Suurkask, the 1998 ECAC Rookie of the Year, and Angie Francisco, who broke Shewchuck's single-season scoring record, anchored a Harvard line that spilled over with talent.

Francisco led Harvard in assists and overall scoring this year with 36 assists and a record 57 points, and Suurkask was the Crimson's leader in goals with 30 and second in scoring with 51 points. They showed early and often a penchant for knowing where the other was on the ice, and most of each one's scoring chances came on setups from the other.

"Loose pucks around Francisco and Suurkask, they're gonna bury `em," said Harvard Coach Katey Stone. "They play off of each other so well. They just find each other somehow."

The Francisco-Suurkask tandem led Harvard's offense from Day One, helping the Crimson capture its first All-American Tournament Championship since 1993. In three convincing victories over national power Minnesota, Augsburg and Gustavus Adolphus by a combined margin of 18 goals, Suurkask tallied seven goals and three assists while Francisco contributed four goals and five assists.

"[Francisco and Suurkask] came in with an attitude of `nothing but the best.' They played their hearts out," Asano said. "They didn't care that they were freshmen. It's very difficult to step in at the college level and dominate, but that's what they did."

But after that 3-0 start, Harvard was plagued by inconsistency. The Crimson failed to win more than two games in a row until it swept its final three regular-season contests to earn a date in the playoffs with the Wildcats.

Season highlights included solid, back-to-back, three-goal wins over traditional ECAC powers Providence and Cornell. And after advancing to the Beanpot Championship with a sound defeat of Boston College, Harvard took second-ranked Northeastern to the brink, erasing a three-goal deficit in the third period before finally losing the `Pot to the Huskies by a slim 5-4 margin.

Record: 14-16, 6-14 ECAC, 2-6 Ivy

Coach: Katey Stone

Highlights: Reaches ECAC playoffs; forces overtime against national champion UNH; Suurkask named ECAC Rookie of the Year

Seniors: Jen Bowdoin, Kate Schutt (expired eligibility)

"We were gritty, and we outworked [Northeastern]," Stone said. "Even though they won, we outworked them. Taking nothing away from them, down to the wire it was our game to win."

But with its playoff hopes on the line as the regular season drew to a close, Harvard swept 6-4, 3-1 and 2-0 victories from ECAC opponents Boston College, Princeton and Yale, respectively, to clinch the eighth and final playoff spot in the ECAC Tournament.

For two and a half periods in that quarterfinal matchup, the Crimson held UNH scoreless thanks in large part to sophomore goaltender Crystal Springer's best performance of the season.

Springer, a transfer from Division III Middlebury, stopped 37 UNH shots, including several breakaways by the Wildcats. Despite the final result of the playoff contest--a 2-1 overtime loss--it, like the loss to Northeastern in the Beanpot Final, was a clear indication that Harvard could compete with the strongest teams in the nation.

"When you play against the No. 1 team, it's about being physical and getting in their faces," Asano said. "Our intensity level, especially in the big games, was huge."

"There was a time last year when we were intimidated by teams like Northeastern, but we pushed them around this year," she continued. "We let them know that, `Hey, we're just as good as you.'"

In addition to the offensive leadership provided by Francisco and Suurkask and the anchoring of the defense by Springer, other players turned in fine seasons as well. Asano played extended minutes while splitting time on offense and defense, and she is poised, along with fellow co-captain-elect Mleczko, to lead Harvard to the national prominence it has long sought.

Junior forward Jen Gerometta, the Crimson's third leading scorer, continued to display the quickness that has made her an offensive threat for the past two seasons. Gerometta's toughness and physical style of play are also unmatched by any member of the Crimson.

Defensemen sophomore Christie MacKinnon and junior Melissa Milbert both improved significantly as the season progressed and should be ready to frustrate ECAC scorers in 1999. Junior co-captain Kyle Walsh also made tremendous strides from her sophomore season and should be a major contributor to Harvard's run for the national crown next season.

"Everyone stepped up their level of play this year," Asano said. "When someone like Angie Francisco, who can score at any time, steps on the ice, you know you have to be your best. When someone is playing well--and it wasn't just Angie--it makes you look at yourself and say, `They need more from me.'"

The 1997-98 season was a season of promise for Harvard. It was the final year of laying a foundation that will place the Crimson in the thick of the national championship chase next season. After losing just two players from this year's squad--junior Kate Schutt's eligibility is up after she spent two years at the Berklee College of Music--Harvard will welcome back Shewchuck and Mleczko in the fall, and a couple of new faces will grace the ice in Bright Hockey Center.

Choate Rosemary Hall senior Angela Ruggiero, a teammate of Mleczko's on the U.S. Olympic Team, and Canadian Olympic Team member Jennifer Botterill are expected to matriculate at Harvard in the fall. Ruggiero and Botterill are widely considered among the continent's top high school players, and both should make immediate contributions much in the same way Shewchuck did last year and Francisco and Suurkask did this season.

"[Ruggiero] has great size, speed and skill. We don't have very much size, and her presence is going to step up our level," Asano said. "Botterill is a great skilled player who is very fast. She's just going to fly around and blow by people. Both of them should make big impacts."

Stone will enter her fifth season at the helm of Harvard women's hockey in the fall, which means that, for the first time, every member of the Crimson next season will be one of Stone's recruits.

"We're in a building stage still in our program, but we are on our way," Stone said at midseason. "I foresee it being a coin toss next year, and who knows what will happen after that. It might be a Harvard dynasty pretty soon."

The rebuilding process is officially over, terminated with Harvard's outstanding effort in the ECAC quarterfinals against UNH. The reconstruction is complete, and the new parts are in place. All that remains is for Harvard to prove that 1997-98 was indeed a stepping stone toward a level of play above that of its past Ivy League-champion condition.

"We know we have the potential and the talent to be great," Asano said, "but it's going to take a lot more than talent to complete our dream of winning it all. It's going to take a lot of heart. We've accepted what we need to do for next year."