Weekly sports roundup: two big hockey wins over Harvard

While 15,524 people at Madison Square Garden (and many more in the TV audience) were watching the men's ice hockey team beat Harvard Saturday night, the women's ice hockey team was also playing the Crimson—and making history with a 2–0 win, their first defeat of Harvard since 2005. The Harvard women (12–2–2) are ranked No. 4 in the nation, while Yale has struggled in recent years, winning only five games last year and just one the year before that. Jackie Raines ’15 and Kate Martini ’16 scored for the Bulldogs, and goalie Jaimie Leonoff ’15 had 29 saves on her way to the first Yale shutout of the Crimson since 1980. At 6–10–1, Yale now has more wins this season—with 12 regular-season games remaining—than they had all season last year. In other action this week, the team lost at Dartmouth on Friday, 5–4.

As for the men's game—the inaugural edition of the Rivalry On Ice, a privately promoted game that is expected to become an annual tradition—the defending national champion Bulldogs (8–3–4, 3–2–3 ECAC) pretty much put things away early in the second period, when they broke a 1–1 tie with three goals in just over three minutes. (Two of them came from sophomore Cody Learned.) Another goal in the third made the final score 5–1 Yale.

The Bulldogs and the Crimson already play each other twice a year in the regular season—once on each campus—and this new game doesn't count in the conference standings. But with celebrity appearances (hockey legend Mark Messier and Senator John Kerry ’66 were on hand for the ceremonial puck drop), an enormous crowd, and the postgame awarding of a trophy, the high-profile Rivalry On Ice stands to become the definitive Yale-Harvard men's hockey meeting of the season, on par with The Game in football and the New London regatta in rowing. And given Yale's recent record in those two, Elis could use a new arena for bragging rights.

In other sports news this week (information from Yale Sports Publicity):

In four matches against nationally ranked opponents this week, not one player on Yale's No. 5 women's squash team gave up a match. The team (6–0, 2–0 Ivy) swept both No. 13 Franklin & Marshall and No. 14 Drexel in Philadelphia on Wednesday, winning all 27 games against both teams. Back in New Haven for Ivy League play, they shut out No. 11 Columbia on Saturday—again without losing a game—and No. 6 Cornell on Sunday.

The results were much the same for the No. 3 men's squash team against the same four opponents, if not quite so lopsided. They beat No. 6 F&M 6–3 and No. 15 Drexel 9–0 on Wednesday, then handled No. 11 Columbia 7-2 on Saturday. The squeaker was Saturday's match with No. 8 Cornell, a 5–4 result that came down to sophomore Pehlaaj Bajwa's win in the ninth position.

The women's and men's swimming and diving teams also did particularly well last week, defeating three Ivy league competitors in just four days. The men's team went 181–119 against Cornell (the team's first Ivy win), 196–104 against Dartmouth, and 155–145 against Penn, while the scores for the women's team were 181-116 against Cornell, 223–77 against Dartmouth, and 162.5–137.5 against Penn. 

The women's basketball team rallied late against New Hampshire Tuesday night, but missed their chance to tie the game and lost 58–53. Sarah Halejian ’15 had 17 points for the Bulldogs. The team (6–8) opens Ivy League play on Friday at Brown. 

The men's basketball team (6–8) closed out its nonconference season at home this week with mixed results. They lost 67–59 to Vermont on Wednesday, then ended a four-game losing streak on Saturday with a decisive 88–49 win over Baruch.

The men's and women's track teams played host at the 32nd Yale Invitational, an unscored meet held at Coxe Cage on Saturday. On the men's side, Yale's 4x400 relay team—Marc André Alexandre ’17, Dylan Hurley ’15, Daniel Jones ’14, and William Rowe ’15—took third place. For the women, Kira Garry ’15 placed second in the mile with a time of 4:57.22, followed in third by Elizabeth McDonald ’16 with a time of 4:59.99.