Spring break is supposed to be a time to relieve stress, not induce it.

But for the Harvard women's lacrosse team, a disturbing trend has come about. For two consecutive years, Harvard (3-1 overall, 1-1 Ivy) has been given its first defeat of the season at the hands of Princeton over the break. Harvard  5 Princeton  10 Harvard  20 Stanford  2

Last season, it was a 5-4 loss at Ohiri Field that gave a sour note to a week without schoolwork. This time around, it was the same story, only more so.

The top-ranked Tigers used a 6-0 run at the start of the second half to put away the seventh-ranked Crimson, 10-5, two Saturdays ago.

Senior midfielder Sarah Winters led Harvard with two goals and an assist.

"We played poorly," sophomore defender Mary Eileen Duffy said. "We definitely defeated ourselves as opposed to Princeton defeating us."

Harvard kept close with Princeton throughout the first half, climbing back from a 3-1 deficit to tie the game at 3-3 at the intermission.

But the Crimson's lapses in the second half haunted the team.

"We weren't doing the basics," sophomore midfielder Lindsay Davison (one goal) said. "We weren't passing and catching the ball well, and our transition was broken by double teams."

A squad such as Harvard should not be having these difficulties. The Crimson is certainly one of the better teams in the nation, but this was not evident to the 295 fans at Lourie-Love Field.

Time and time again, Princeton players had open shots that would end with a clang off the post, a save by sophomore goaltender Kate Schutt (seven saves in the first half) or a miss altogether.

And when your opponent is the defending national champions, you can't expect this sort of luck to continue forever.

It only took the Tigers 1:03 to regain the lead, and less than eight minutes later it was 8-3. During this period of time, Princeton took every bit of wind out of Harvard's sails and essentially doomed the Crimson to lose.

"They scored a lot on transition [in the second half]," sophomore attacker Liz Schoyer said. "It was either right off the draw, or we would turn the ball over."

For Harvard, the problem wasn't that specific players weren't playing badly but that they didn't play as a team. In a sense, the team wasn't on the same wavelength.

This proved to be disastrous, since it left Schutt with no protection. After making seven saves on 10 shots in the first half, the Harvard goalie made only one on eight in the second.