April's challenges will include the ECAC Championships at Princeton, the New England Championships at Harvard, and the College Water Polo Association Eastern Championships at Princeton.

"It was good to get some of the harder competition in the beginning," Gunderson said. "We now have a better idea of what our expectations are and what we need to do. We've developed tremendously as a team."

The team, under Coach Jim Floerchinger, will have to do a lot more developing in the next month. The team started practicing together only recently. Freshman Jane Humphries, who scored a number of goals this weekend, did so in her collegiate debut after a busy swimming season.

Last year, a fourth-place finish at Easterns left the Crimson just short of a trip to the National Championships.

"Everyone was solid this weekend," she said. "The team on the whole did some great things. We'll work on teamwork now that we're together, but these games definitely show that we're getting closer."