Harvard's icewomen were scheduled to play a real hockey game in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Saturday afternoon. But their rivals from Skidmore put up hardly any opposition, as the Crimson strolled to an absurdly easy 5-0 win.

The five-goal margin makes the game look much closer than it actually was. The Crimson pulled away from Skidmore gradually, leading by three at the end of two 15-minute periods. The real story of the game was the shots-on-goal totals, 47 by Harvard to only four by Skidmore. Over their six games this season, the Crimson has outshot its opponents by more than a two-to-one margin.

Heroics

The hero of the first period was Skidmore netminder Rachel Finn. She stopped 19 Harvard shots, while her teammates tested Crimson goalie Cheryl Tate just once. But winger Liz Ward beat Finn to start the scoring five minutes into the game, when she converted a pass from the squad's leading scorer, Dianne Hurley.

In the second stanza, when it was outshot only 9-3, Skidmore almost looked as if it were in the game. But the usually low-scoring line of Jennifer White, Kathy Carroll and Alex Lightfoot tallied twice in the period to widen the Harvard lead to three.

Carroll made it 2-0 when she scored off a pass from White on a two-on-one break, at 3:38. White scored one of her own at 12:11, assisted by Carroll and blueliner Deb Taft.

Degenerating

The Skidmore attack withered away completely in the third period, as they had no shots to counter Harvard's 18. After five minutes coach John Dooley pulled goalie Tate to give back-ups Frances Ruml and Tracey Kimmel time on the ice.

The Crimson widened the margin to four when White scored her second of the afternoon, again off passes from Carroll and Taft, at the 6:40 mark. As Skidmore staggered toward the final buzzer, coach Dooley gave his fourth line of Kristy Anastasio, Dinny Starr and Katrinka Leschey extra ice-time. The trio finished off the scoring as Starr tallied her first goal with the varsity at 8:18, with assists by NOTEBOOK: For the second time this season the Crimson's goal-total was higher than the oppositions's shot-total....Bad news on the injury front: as the result of a knee injury, the second-highest Crimson scorer, Tania Huber, will probably play no more than two games before she graduates at the end of the semester... The icewomen, now 4-2, face off next on Friday in the two-day Princeton Tournament. If the Crimson gets past the Tigers in the first round, it will likely face the top-ranked Providence Friars.