The 1984-85 sports season started off innocuously enough, with a 1-0 women's soccer victory over Bowdoin.

Even before the football team traveled to New York for its annual opener against Columbia, the Crimson had demonstrated that 1984-85 was going to be another outstanding year for Harvard intercollegiate athletics.

And when the final varsity heavyweight shell crosses the finish line in Cincinatti on June 15, ending the Collegiate Nationals, Harvard and Radcliffe teams will have claimed 12 Ivy League titles, tying the all-time league mark they established two years ago--and almost matched last year with 11 Ivy crowns.

The soccer player who orchestrated that initial whitewash, freshman goalkeeper Tracee Whitley, was only the first of many Yardlings in the sports spotlight this year.

The netminder for the U.S. 19-and-under squad and the most sought-after goalie in her graduating class. Whitley wasn't one to sit on her credentials, recording 394:15 (four-plus games) minutes of scoreless play before she allowed her first collegiate goal.

Whitley wasn't supposed to do much netminding in her rookie campaign--the bulk of the keeping chores were to rest on the able shoulders of fifth-year senior Janet Judge, who had returned from an injury suffered in the first game of the 1983 season.

Bad Judgement

Judge, however, ended up on the sidelines for the entire campaign, the victim of an obscure NCAA by-law that stated that she had used her fourth and final season of eligibility by traveling to Europe with the team the previous summer, following her spring semester off. With Judge sidelined, Ivy Rookie of the Year Whitley shone.

Also shining were the football team's one-two punch of running backs Mark Vignall and Robert Santiago who led the squad to 5-4 overall mark and a second place Ivy finish despite falling to Yale in The 101st Game.

The women's soccer team, meanwhile, also didn't claim its Ivy crown--its sole league loss, a 1-0 decision to Brown, put the Crimson out of the race for the Ancient Eight laurels. The booters did advance to the NCAA playoffs, however.

Even non-title winners enjoyed a healthy measure of success. Both soccer squads advanced to the national playoffs despite not claiming league crowns. The men, who also drew on the considerable talents of their freshmen, fielded their first Ivy Rookie of the Year, Nick Hotchkin.

The women's volleyball team was not as successful, but nonetheless worked to a 11-15 mark.

The field hockey squad struggled, posting a 5-10 slate, after being touted as league favorites.

The women's basketball team returned to the realm of respectability, posting an 8-18 slate after three campaigns that yielded a total of 14 victories.

The men's ski team claimed a carnival, its first such triumph in a quarter-century, and although the Crimson wound up the season second behind its nemesis, Johnston State, in its Division II circuit, the result was encouraging for the snowmen.