“We’re very fired up about next week because we’re going to get another chance to play Dartmouth,” Stone said after the game.

Harvard did get another chance against Dartmouth, but it came in the consolation game, not the championship game as Stone had hoped. In the NCAA semifinals, Dartmouth suffered a shocking loss to St. Lawrence, and Harvard fell to eventual champion Minnesota-Duluth. In the season finale, a pair of goals by Ingram and the final Harvard goal by all-time leading scorer Tammy Shewchuk ’00-’01 lifted the Crimson to a 3-2 victory.

Back to the Present

With Botterill and Ruggiero both gone for the Salt Lake Olympics, Harvard was an even bigger underdog against the Big Green in 2001-02. Though the Crimson never beat Dartmouth that year, Harvard played the Big Green close in each of three meetings—defeats of 3-2, 3-2, and 4-2. The last Dartmouth victory in the ECAC semifinals was closer than the final score indicated as the Big Green added an empty-netter in the final second.

When the teams met in the first weekend of the present season, there was another role reversal. Dartmouth was missing three of its national team players—Gillian Apps, Meagan Walton, and Cherie Piper—to the Four Nations Cup. Harvard’s national team players—Ruggiero, Botterill and Chu—chose to stay. The result was a 9-2 Harvard thrashing, the biggest Crimson victory over Dartmouth in school history.

Because tomorrow’s game will be the first this season to feature the two teams at full strength, it will be the Crimson freshmen’s first pure taste of the Harvard-Dartmouth rivalry.

“The other players have talked about it,” Chu said. “Over the years it’s a great rivalry that has come up, and I think that’s great for the sport. On Friday, both teams are going to come out flying.”

—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at remer@fas.harvard.edu.