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.

"Individually we were working on things, but collectively we weren't doing it," Davison said. "We didn't connect on the same level we could have."

Once Davison tallied Harvard's first second-period goal with 13:27 left to play, making the score 9-4, it was too little, too late. Princeton's a great team--certainly good enough to play keep-away for 10 minutes.

The loss set the tone for the rest of spring break. Determined to improve, Harvard flew to Florida for an informal tournament with a horde of unimpressive teams--the only Division I team there, Stanford, just started playing varsity lacrosse.

For the first few days, the Crimson worked at fixing up its Achilles heel--the transition.

"We had tons and tons of drills," Davison said. "We practiced on just moving the ball faster and faster."

Then, it was time for Harvard to have its first game since the Princeton loss. It wasn't pretty--for the opposition.

The final score against Stanford last Friday was 20-2, and it wasn't even that close.

"[Stanford] is a new program," Schoyer said. "I thought that they were all right, but we were really fired up."

The Fall of the Titan

But wait! Princeton can't quite yet engrave its name on another NCAA championship trophy. The Tigers fell to fourth-ranked Dartmouth on Saturday, 10-9, providing the Big Green with some sweet revenge.

For each of the past two seasons, Dartmouth has lost seemingly insurmountable leads to Princeton. Last year, the Big Green was up by two with 30 seconds left but lost in double-overtime. And two years ago, the Tigers roared back from a 8-3 deficit with eight minutes to go to win in OT.

The upset also gives Harvard the chance to guarantee a first-place tie in the league if it wins the rest of its Ivy games. Of course, one of those is against Dartmouth.

"That was sweet news for us," Duffy said. "Those two show how strong the Ivy League is now."