“Tremendous improvement—it’s night and day how hard they play,” Stone said. “Their intensity was there start to finish. Even just in the warmup you could tell they were a really different team from last year. As an alum, that’s really awesome.”
Cast Away
Harvard is already in the position it wanted to be in at this stage of the season with an 11-1 record going into winter break and a No. 1 national ranking.
Stone expects the team to be even better after the break, now that captain Kalen Ingram—who has missed all but two games this season with a broken thumb—is scheduled to have her cast and pins removed today.
“We’ve been doing this without one of our very best players,” Stone said. “We’re anxious to have her back after Christmas, and it’s just going to make things more fun.”
Ingram was one of the three leading returning scorers in the nation during the 2001-02 season. In her last game—a 9-2 thrashing of No. 5 Dartmouth on Nov. 9—Ingram scored a clever goal that put Harvard ahead for good when she deflected a puck off the body of Big Green goaltender Amy Ferguson from an impossible angle on the end line.
With winter break coming up, Ingram now has weeks to prepare for her return. Stone said she’ll work Ingram back into the lineup as quickly and often as she can, though she understands she may have to be eased in.
“We want Kalen in March so we want to make sure we do the right thing with her,” Stone said.
Another implication of Ingram’s return is that the Crimson lines will have to be reshuffled. Prior to her injury, Ingram played on the second line with sophomore Nicole Corriero and junior Lauren McAuliffe. Senior Tracy Catlin moved up from the third line after Ingram’s injury, and junior Mina Pell moved into Catlin’s prior spot when she joined the team at the end of the field hockey season.
Ingram’s return will give Stone more depth than she’s ever had to work with. As a result, there will be plenty of healthy competition within the team and many decisions for Stone to make.
“The makeup of our team changes after Christmas,” Stone said. “How everyone fits into that lineup will be determined by what they prove every day.”
—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at remer@fas.harvard.edu.