Suddenly and unceremoniously, the Christina Kessler Era is over for the Harvard women’s hockey team. The standout senior goaltender tore her ACL during practice last week, ending her season and college career. There’s plenty of hockey left for Kessler, who is on the Canadian Under-22 team and will likely be a national team fixture for years to come, but her loss deals the Crimson (10-5-4, 8-5-2 ECAC) a devastating blow. The squad faces the ECAC playoff hunt and seeks an NCAA Tournament bid with untested rookie Laura Bellamy starting between the pipes and junior Kylie Stephens returning to the squad as a backup.

Kessler’s tenure with Harvard ends with her name scribbled all over the school and NCAA record books. She holds the Crimson’s all-time wins and shutout marks with 64 and 25, respectively. In her sophomore year, Kessler notched 12 shutouts—at the time an NCAA record (Wisconsin’s Jessie Vetter tallied 14 blank sheets last season). Kessler finishes her career with a .9413 save percentage, which places her just ahead of Vetter (.9407) as the NCAA’s all-time leader.

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WASHINGTON, D.C.—Yesterday afternoon, I stood in the parking lot of the Verizon Center along with my fellow Crimson writers waiting for the lot’s manager to come discuss the boot his staff had deemed necessary to put on our car’s front left tire.

With time to spare, I reflected on the game we had just watched—the Harvard men’s basketball team’s 86-70 loss to No. 13 Georgetown—and two moments from the contest remained particularly clear in my mind.

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Those of us on The Crimson’s Sports Board feel the same way about Yale football coach Tom Williams as Boston Red Sox fans feel about the Yankees’ closer Mariano Rivera.

We hate the team, but we respect the man.

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BETHLEHEM, Penn.—The saga of Cheng Ho follows an inconsistent yet captivating trajectory, repeatedly thrusting its protagonist into the spotlight only to plunge him back into obscurity. It is a story of adversity and Ho’s irrepressible determination to overcome it; a tale of hard work and hard luck that strikes a positive tone only because of the Harvard senior running back’s relentless optimism.

In the Crimson’s 28-14 win over Lehigh on Saturday, Ho emerged as the Crimson offense’s most effective weapon, working like a skilled veteran boxer to wear down his opponent. Rather than swinging wildly in hopes of landing a knockout blow, he executed short, swift strikes—five yards here, eight yards there—which accumulated and left the Mountain Hawks standing, but incapable of mounting any sort of counterattack in the contest’s waning stages.

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