Saying goodbye is never easy, but the salve of victory always soothes the sting of regret.

Bouncing back from a disappointing weekend, the Harvard women's squash team (12-1) redeemed itself last night with a dominating 9-0 victory over the Yale Bulldogs at the Murr Center's Barnaby Courts. The victory crowned the Crimson the Ivy League champions. YALE  0 HARVARD  9

After letting the national championship slip away from its fingers last weekend, Harvard made sure that it would bring home at least one championship this season.

"It's good sum-up to the season," said freshman Margaret Elias, Harvard's No. 1 player. "We have seven seniors leaving after this season, and we were able to play all 15 players [last night]. It was a good win for us and a good way to end the year."

In an effort to prove that they are the nation's true No. 1 team, the Crimson soundly stomped the Bulldogs last night by never dropping a game. All Harvard players easily won their matches by a score of 3-0 and didn't allow the Bulldogs to gain an inch.

"We all played really strong during the match," said sophomore Virginia Brown. "We all fell great about winning [last night], and we're excited about how we ended the season."

"We were definitely a much stronger team than they were," said senior Leah Ramella, who played at the No. 7 position. "I really don't think that there were any matches [last night] that had close scores."

Victory came in all forms to the Crimson last night.

For example, co-captain and 1997 All-American Brooke Herlihy, playing at the No. 2 spot for the Crimson, accidentally jolted Yale's Loren Smith during a stroke, and the Yale coaching staff discovered that Smith had lost a tooth from Herlihy's inadvertent blow. As a result, Herlihy won her match by default.

But nothing could stop the Crimson.

"[The win] was really surprising because [Yale is] a really good team," said senior Lindsay Wilber, who played at the No. 5 spot for the Crimson. "We just put it all together last night to beat them. It was a great way to end the season."

By defeating Yale, Harvard captured the Ivy League Championship, which had virtually been in its possession since the beginning of the year. The glitter of a new trophy, however, cannot dull the pain of losing the national championship to Princeton last weekend.

In the heated battle for the Howe Cup, known as the unofficial national championship, Harvard garnered easy victories over both Cornell and Trinity before losing a difficult 5-4 decision to Princeton on Sunday. Before that loss, Harvard had been ranked No.1 in the country.

By upsetting the previously undefeated Crimson, the Tigers won their second consecutive national championship. Their first title in 1998 had ended the Crimson's six-year reign atop the squash throne.

"[Last weekend] was disappointing, but everyone really thought that they had played their hardest," Elias said. "We had three tough five-games matches, and two of our players came back from being behind 0-2, so we really played hard this weekend."

"Certainly [winning the Ivy League Championship] doesn't make up for the Howe Cup loss, but it's always nice to end the season with a win," Ramella said.

Next year, Harvard will have to replace the loss of Ramella and her six other senior colleagues, who closed the door on their illustrious squash careers last night.

Herlihy, co-captain Stephanie Teaford (No. 3), Wilber, Ramella, Ilana Eisenstein (No. 9), Vanessa Hoermann (out with an injury) and Katie Wallach (No. 15) will all bid the Crimson a fond farewell.

"I think that everybody's sad that the season is over," Ramella said. "Some of us may feel like our careers are over, but we've all had a great four years, and we feel great about [winning last night]."

"We have a very, very tight squad," Wilber said. "We have five seniors playing in the top nine spots, so it was really sad for us last night to hear us called Harvard squash players for the last time. We have three-time All-Americans on the team, but that doesn't really mean anything to us in team squash. We have had a great year."