Bev Stickles is known for her speed and strong defending skills as the Harvard women's hockey co-captain. What most hockey fans may not know is that her tough defense extends beyond the ice rink.

Four years of playing hockey have given Stickles a bigger task than preventing goals. She has become an advocate for greater gender equality in Harvard athletics. And she is vocal about it.

"I don't always think when I speak," she says. "My personality is [such] that I tend to call things as I see them."

What Stickles sees is an unequal access to publicity and support for women's sports at Harvard.

This inequity is being translated into differences in equipment availability and school publicity, Stickles says.

"Sometimes I get frustrated with the difference between men's and women's teams," Stickles says.

"For example, Stickles and her teammates made Channel 38 coverage for the Beanpot finals. However, her team didn't receive the level of media coverage given to the men's team, which also reached the finals.

"The Independent ran a huge preview on the [men's] Beanpot and didn't even mention that the women have one," she says.

But Stickles was busier battling Northeastern this season than fighting athletic policy.

She and Co-Captain Sandra Whyte led their team to a first-ever win over their archrivals.

The win over the Huskies, Stickles says, was the season's highlight.

"If we had tried to match them speed for speed, or stick skills for stick skills, we wouldn't of made it," she says, "but it came down to who wanted it more."

After finishing her last season of collegiate hockey by narrowly missing the ECAC playoffs, Stickles still thinks team had a great season.

Harvard missed the playoffs "so narrowly that the Dartmouth coach [had already] called our coach to make a date for our first playoff game," Stickles says.

Stickles hasn't given her time to hockey alone.

In addition to the all-afternoon studio labs of her Visual Environmental Studies concentration, she has worked in the dorm crew office for four years. She considers it a welcome break from the grind of the hockey schedule.

"I need the people I meet randomly--through dorm crew--to balance my life," she says. "I like having both halves."

Stickles refuses to think of herself as a Harvard jock.

"I'm not typical. I don't go to the D.U. I don't go to finals clubs," she says.

"Stick"--a nickname given during her freshman year--laughs off and denies her reputation as the team's morale builder.

However, Stickles concedes that she and Whyte push the team hard.

"During practice I expect other people to play at their best. I try to keep everyone skating," she says.

Hockey won't end for Stickles with her diploma. She is currently looking for a teaching position at a preparatory school in which she can teach art and coach hockey and soccer.

Stickles, who helped to bring home the Ivy League championship during her freshman year, concedes that "the men's team is better, and draws larger crowds, and they deserve it."

But Stickles is keeping up her defense for women's hockey as she finally steps off the Crimson rink.

"Women's hockey is a varsity sport and should be treated as such. With respect."