Graham was quoted after the match as saying that because of the protest. "There is going to be bad blood between [Harvard and Brown]."

Continued Decline

Despite winning the Ivy title in 1992 behind the powerful play of Erika deLone '95, the exodus of players started in earnest that spring.

Junior Samantha Ettus, Harvard's number-two player, left right before the team's California trip. Senior Melinda Wang also chose not to continue playing later that spring.

"My quitting shocked a lot of people," Ettus said. "But I figured that if I was no longer psyched to be going out there and playing, it wasn't worth it anymore."

When deLone announced after the season that she would turn professional, the floodgates opened. Seniors Heather Chulock, Elmuts, Pollock, Jennifer Yu and sophomore Karen Todd all quit the team.

Graham attributed the rush of departures to "extracurricular attrition."

"You see a fair amount of attrition in any extracurricular event," Graham said. "People play because they like to play. There's no scholarship holding them to it."

But other players did not share Graham's reasoning behind the players' departures.

"Melinda quit because of pre-med stuff," McNabb said. "Heather and Samantha just didn't enjoy playing anymore."

Academic Priorities

Graham's view of academic priorities has also been cited as a cause of discontent within the team and a reason for the loss of players like Wang.

"[Graham] doesn't allow us to study between matches at a tournament," junior Mary Park said. "Sometimes we have three or four hours between matches and we can't study at all, but have to root for our teammates. It's hard when you're doing science and you've got problem sets due."

Graham countered that the study policy was a team decision.

"That was a decision reached by the team," Graham said.