In the recent past, one does not ask what kind of season the Harvard field hockey team had. One asks what went wrong.

Injuries and a sputtering offense happened in 1995, putting a team that hoped to win the Ivy League title in second-to-last place. All-around inconsistency and more injuries happened in 1994, and subsequently the top of the league was far away.

Both years, the Crimson had pretty good individual talent, but the team lost and didn't look good doing it.

Coming out of this year's fall practices, there's more bad news. Besides the graduation of the starting goaltender and two-thirds of the mid-fielders, three players won't return. Junior attacker Jen Bowdoin and senior attacker Courtenay Benedict decided to stop playing, while junior Sally Romano, perhaps the team's best defender, is taking a year off.

As a result, some players will have to learn new positions, and there will be little depth anywhere. Remember, this is a team that's trying to do better than it did last year.

But on the other hand, Harvard's best attackers--sophomores Judy Collins and Penny Fairbairn--are back and more experienced. Also, junior backs Beck Stringer and Eileen Horwath are healthy for the first time in years, which should allow the Crimson to take the loss of Romano in stride.

As usual, Harvard coach Sue Caples is taking the optimistic side.

"I think we learned from last year," she said. "People coming back are naturally better--they've matured. Field hockey is hard to get good at."

In one aspect of the game, Harvard--and everyone else--will have to start from scratch. The NCAA decided to scratch the offsides rule while still allowing players to shoot anywhere from inside the 25-yard line, which should lead to a wideopen game with lots of goals.

Therefore, Collins, Fairbairn and junior attacker Amy DiMarzio will have a lot of area to work with--and the defense will have a lot of area to cover.

"Especially for me playing sweeper, we don't know how to [react]" co-captain Daphne Clark said. "The field will be more spread out, and there's going to be a lot more space."

Another unknown going into the season is who will play midfield and goalie. The cageminder will either be sophomore Laura Stillman or freshman Anya Cowan, with Cowan playing throughout preseason because of an injury to Stillman's hand.

In the midfield, only sophomore Tara LaSovage returns from last season, meaning that two of the backs will have to move up.

The Ivies are also a bit mixed-up, as Columbia is preparing to enter the league formally in the fall of 1997. This season, the Lions will play three varsity Ivy teams and they will play the J.V. teams of the other Ivy schools.

Princeton again looks like the team to beat, as the Tigers are the favorite to win their third straight title, thanks to the return of super junior Amy McFarlane from a year off playing for the Canadian National team.