HANOVER, N.H.--Like a summer camp counselor, frolicking with his adolescents by day and enjoying nightlife with his peers after dark, the Harvard field hockey team adjusts its level of play to its company.

Sometimes, like last weekend's 1-1 tie against Cornell, the results can be disastrous. But Saturday, when the stickwomen traveled here to meet nationally-ranked Dartmouth, the result was the squad's finest offensive of the season, and a heartbreaking 2-1 loss which effectively squashes any lingering Ivy title hopes among Crimson partisans.

Only in the September 27 trench war at New Hampshire has the team played so well. Although Harvard fired only six shots at the Dartmouth net, continual movement and crisp, intelligent passes kept the Crimson in a game which, let's face it, it had no business staying in.

With super-steady Ann Velie still nursing a leg injury, the burden of starting up the Harvard offense fell on Lili Pew and forward-turned-link Maggie Hart.

Their first-half play was steady but unspectacular, but in the second half, and particularly in the game's final 20 minutes, Pew and Hart combined agressive, intelligent defense with imaginative offense--phrases which describe well what playing link is all about.

At the other end, senior Betty Ippolito enjoyed one of her finest days. The superlatives get tiresome, but once again Ippolito's range and movement stifled the Dartmouth attack. Quick, agile and domineering, she repulsed 11 shots and wandered far into the circle to the circle to intercept loose balls.

With Dartmouth up 1-0, the Big D tallied on the rarest of all field hockey occurences, a penalty shot.

The Record

The record merely shows that at 1:02 of the second half, Annabelle Brainard scored to increase Dartmouth's lead to 2-0, but those who witnessed the goal will remember a great deal more.

This was one of sport's pure moments. Brainard and Ippolito poised and motionless, faced each other at one end of the pitch. The assembled numbers (about 250, four-fifths from Dartmouth), at first grew loud, but settled into an expectant hush. Suddenly, both moved--Brainard flipping the ball high to Ippolito's right, the netminder reaching skyward as the ball slipped by and rippled into the back of the Harvard net.

Bandage

The lackluster second half has, in the past week, joined the Ace bandage as a Crimson trademark; yet somehow, in this logical give-up-and-go-home situation, the Crimson didn't fold.

The fine offensive effort didn't play off until Laura DiBonaventura scored her second goal of the season at 33:02 to narrow the margin to 2-1.

But as half-a-hundred Harvard supporters screamed in paroxysms of exhortion, time wound down, giving Harvard just one more well-played loss.