Rookies of the Year:

As every women's hockey coach in the ECAC muttered in disgust all season long, freshmen Jen Botterill and Angela Ruggiero did not play like rookies.

Instead, they played like the Olympians they are--"Rugger" won a gold medal for the United States at Nagano in 1998 by defeating "Bots" and her Canadian teammates, who had to settle for silver.

When they joined forces at Bright Hockey Center in 1998-99, the result was a 33-1 season and the first national championship in Harvard women's hockey history.

Botterill, a winger, finished third in the nation in scoring with 37 goals and 51 assists behind linemates A.J. Mleczko and Tammy Shewchuk.

Ruggiero finished sixth in the country, and first amongst all defensemen, with 21 goals and 40 assists. Princeton winger Andrea Kilbourne finished a distant third in freshman scoring with half as many points as Botterill (44) and 17 points less than Ruggiero.

Playing on probably the most feared line in the history of women's hockey, Botterill provided a balance between Mleczko's playmaking and Shewchuk's stickhandling. Botterill rose to the occasion when her team needed her most, leading the nation with eight game-winning goals.

The final game-winner of her rookie campaign came 8:01 into overtime of the AWCHA National Championship game against defending champ New Hampshire off a slippery pass from Mleczko.

That goal, and a hat trick in the semifinal victory over the best defensive team in the country, Brown, earned Botterill the AWCHA Tournament MVP Award, the only tournament MVP of the season not claimed by Mleczko.

As she showed Brown, Botterill can skate, pass and shoot with anyone in the country. While the Crimson will continue to rely on Shewchuk for goals and aggressive forechecking, Botterill may be the top candidate to replace Mleczko as the first-line center and anchor of the offense.

The key to the 1999-2000 Harvard defense, however, will be the intimidating 5'10, 180-pound presence of Ruggiero. Her scorching slapper is not a friend to opposing goaltenders or the boards and, though body-checking is illegal in women's hockey, Ruggiero does not shy away from collisions.

But Ruggiero also has the stickhandling and speed to lead her teammates down the ice for an odd-man rush. Like Botterill, Ruggiero also came through in the clutch.

With New Hampshire leading Harvard by one goal and 75 seconds left in regulation of the ECAC championship game, Ruggiero kept the puck in the offensive zone at the blue line. She walked around one Wildcat defender before rifling a cross-ice pass to Shewchuk, who one-timed the puck into the net from the left doorstep.

It was clear how valuable the two freshmen were to the Crimson when they left the squad briefly in march to join their respective national teams at the World Championships in Finland--where Botterill and the Canadians avenged the loss at Nagano by defeating Ruggiero and the United States in the championship game.

Without Botterill, 7th-place Princeton took Harvard to overtime before Ruggiero bailed out the Crimson with the game-winning goal in the extra period. After Ruggiero joined Botterill in Finland, Harvard barely survived eighth-place Cornell with a 3-2 victory in the ECAC Tournament quarterfinal.

Ruggiero and Botterill joined Mleczko and Shewchuk on the All-America, ECAC and Ivy League First Teams. The ECAC and Ivy League both selected Botterill as the 1998-99 Rookie of the Year, which she certainly deserved, but so did Ruggiero.