A little too much vacationing and not enough hockey over the winter break put the Harvard women's ice hockey team on the first plane out of Lake Placid, N.Y.

At this weekend's Lake Placid Tournament, the Crimson placed fifth out of six teams, losing two of three games.

Harvard (5-2 overall, 2-0 Ivy League) lost to the Rochester Institute of Technology, 5-0, in the first round and dropped a 5-1 decision to Cornell (5-1) Saturday. On Sunday, Harvard pulled together to defeat Colby, 3-2.

"It definitely wasn't a stellar performance," Tri-Captain Brita Lind said. "We didn't go into the games with much intensity."

Playing without four key players didn't help much either. With Martina Albright, Char Joslin, Catherine Wolfram and Kate Flather missing from the lineup, Harvard Coach John Dooley had to juggle positions.

"It was sort of an adjustment tournament. The whole team wasn't there," Lind said. "We looked at it as an opportunity to work on our weaknesses and get some good practice...but we could've played better."

"It was really hard because we only had two days of practice before we went there," freshman Ginny Simmonds said.

In the RIT game--played in the 1932 Olympic arena--Harvard didn't score a goal. RIT, which is usually a difficult opponent, kept the pressure on goalie Jennifer White, who had 32 saves.

The loss to Ivy cellar-dweller Cornell caught the Crimson off guard. Freshman Beverly Stickles scored the lone Harvard goal off an assist by Wendy Millet in the final minutes of the game to dash away the Big Red's hopes for a shutout.

"The Cornell game was really an upset," Tri-Captain Julia Trotman said. "We were just in a practice mode. Nobody really had the killer attitude."

Harvard's freshmen corps shone in Sunday's win over Colby in the 1980 Olympic arena. Taking an assist from Sandra Whyte, Stickles came through again and scored in the first period. Simmonds followed her classmates' leads in the opening period and tallied an unassistsed goal. In the third period, Whyte delivered the game-winner.

"Without a couple of starters, [the tournament] gave a good opportunity for the younger players to get experience against some good teams that they normally wouldn't have gotten," Dooley said. "We're a young team with eight or nine freshmen, which is almost half of the team. I learned a tremendous amount about what they could and could not do."

The trip gave the team a taste of what to expect when it takes on RIT and Cornell in regular-season action this Saturday and Sunday.

"We're going to readjust our fore-checking for RIT and Cornell," Trotman said.

Despite the performance last weekend, Harvard is optimistic about its match against Dartmouth tonight in Hanover, N.H. The Big Green lost in the tournament's championship game to Cornell.

"We realized we had a lot of work to do and we've been practicing hard," Assistant Coach Julie Sasner said. "We're ready."