Although the Gaels finished the first quarter with just a one-goal advantage, momentum stayed on their side through the proceeding two quarters, and the team ran up the score to 13-8.

“[Their offense] was an aggressive style of play,” said Dukes, who made her collegiate debut in the contest. “They knew what they were doing, jumping off the bottom of the pool, and they were taking a lot of shots.”

By the fourth quarter, Harvard was better accustomed to the shallow-deep setup, which took away from the large home-pool advantage the Gaels maintained throughout most of the game.

“We were down by six, but the girls just went crazy,” Dukes said. “In the fourth quarter, everyone just turned on and got used to the strange pool.”

Dukes said it not only took her until the fourth quarter to get used to the shallow-deep pool, but it also took until that point to grow used to the collegiate level of play.

“The whole game, I was just kind of rattled a little,” Dukes said. “But by the fourth quarter, I kind of calmed down a little just seeing my team play like that.”

Dukes and Griffin are currently working with the team to fill the large void left by the absence of senior goalie Laurel McCarthy, who is recovering from surgery for the entirety of the season.

The two freshman goalies have not been informed yet if they will continue to rotate as starters at next weekend’s Princeton Invitational.

“We’re both freshman, and we’ve both never played [for a collegiate program] before, so we split time the whole tournament,” Dukes said. “It was good for both of us, because it gave us a chance to see the game. We both needed that chance. We’ll see how it goes next week.”

—Staff writer Patrick Galvin can be reached at pgalvin@college.harvard.edu.