Women’s soccer senior midfielder Katie Westfall and her teammates painted their stomachs to support the women’s hockey team.

Sunday afternoon’s game will go down in the books as a 2-1 loss for the women’s hockey team, but it should be considered a split decision.

That’s because the Crimson scored a big hit with the Harvard community and succeeded in finally drawing a large crowd to its game.

“It was a great turnout,” co-captain Angela Ruggiero said. “Every person in the stadium saw a good hockey game. That’s going to translate into them coming back to a second or third game. That’s how the sport grows.”

The attendance seemed to have come up short by the time the first puck was dropped, but time proved that a long line of fans waiting to get tickets was preventing quicker entrance into the stadium.

By the final tally, a record 1,921 women’s hockey fans—surpassing the previous mark of 1,741 set by last year’s Harvard-Dartmouth matchup—braved the cold and early game time and swarmed into Bright Hockey Center for what proved to be a game for the ages.

It’s about time. Prior to Sunday’s game, the season-high attendance mark was 234 against New Hampshire on Dec. 9.

The show of support did not go unnoticed by either team.

“I thought [the turnout] was great,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “I am so appreciative of people stepping up and getting out here to these games. This is the kind of crowd that our kids deserve to play in front of.”

The game drew an even larger crowd than either of the No. 1 Minnesota/No. 4 Minnesota-Duluth tilts over the weekend, which posted attendance records of 1489 fans on Friday and 1587 on Saturday.

“You generally don’t get a lot of people for a 2:00 game,” Dartmouth coach Mark Hudak said. “I think it does show that if you’re putting two good teams on the ice that are going to play against each other, people want to watch women’s hockey.”

Those nearly 2,000 fans included a surprising number of students, one group the Crimson has repeatedly struggled to attract to games this season.

A great deal of credit belongs to the Harvard-Radcliffe Foundation for Women’s Athletics, which organized a pizza study break for all female athletes in order to attract more support for the hockey team’s big game. Their efforts drew a centralized fan base consisting of athletes from Harvard’s field hockey, soccer and softball teams and Radcliffe crew, in addition to numerous other female and male athletes scattered around the arena.

“I sent a mass e-mail out to my team saying, ‘Go to the women’s ice hockey game on Sunday; it’s going to be awesome,’” said Radcliffe freshman crew coach Cory Bosworth. “I love watching the women’s ice hockey team and I love coming to games when we’re out of season. I think watching other teams play helps our team keep competitive and supportive of the community.”

Radcliffe crew had organized a team outing when the Crimson played UNH on Dec. 9, a game that did not draw the attendance the team was hoping to see.

“I think it’s really important to support our fellow female athletes at Harvard,” freshman Kayla Southworth said. “I know the last game we went to wasn’t nearly as cool. Just to see so many people supporting the team is really nice.”