Big Green with Envy

The press conference after the Harvard women's hockey team's 3-2 overtime loss to Dartmouth left no doubt that the Big Green envies Harvard's talent.

"I think we've proven that we're a better team than Harvard," Dartmouth junior winger Carrie Sekela said. "We have more depth and a better goalie. We know that they're a one-line team."

I'm sure that Sekela, a Big Green third-line player, would love to imagine that if she played for Harvard, she'd actually get a moment of playing time. But probably deep down she knows that if her team's first line were nearly half as talented as Harvard's, she'd be calling Dartmouth a one-line team.

Amy Ferguson, the Big Green's amazing freshman goalie, boasts a spectacular 9-7-0 record on the season. In Sekela's eyes, she is far superior to Harvard's 17-3-3 Crystal Springer. While describing a save made in overtime, Ferguson made a fairly nasty comment about Harvard sophomore defender Angela Ruggiero.

"I knew [Ruggiero] was going high glove on me," Ferguson said. "She's the kind of player that needs to beat you with a pretty goal."

Ruggiero, a 1998 Olympic Gold Medalist, must have deeply offended Ferguson by actually playing to the best of her ability. Clearly in Ferguson's eyes, Ruggiero has no right to use her Olympic-level talent to beat a college-level player.

Well, Ferguson and Sekela can be happy that they won this round. Maybe in 2002, they can watch the Olympics together on television. As they watch the Harvard alumni playing for Team Canada and Team USA, they can take pleasure in reliving the day they actually triumphed over them. It'll be kind of like listening to Al Bundy describe his four touchdowns in a single high school football game.