Elis Pose No Challenge For Laxwomen, 7-2

Yalies are advised not to stroll around beautiful downtown New Haven after sunset. Too dangerous, apparently.

The Harvard women's lacrosse team is making it unsafe for its opponents to walk around during the day.

Yesterday, the Crimson whipped the Elis on their home turf, 7-2, in a clash of previously unbeaten Ivy Powers.

Sophomore Sarah Downing scored three times in the victory, while seniors Liz Berkery and Buffy Hansen tallied twice.

The win raised the Crimson's record to 7-0 (3-0 Ivy). Yale fell to 3-4 (2-1 Ivy).

"We expected them to be a good team," Berkery said. "But it was very nice to beat Yale."

"We did our part for Harvard," she added.

First Half Outburst

In a rather bizarre note, all nine goals were scored in the first half.

Berkery gave two reasons for the odd occurrence:

"Our attack was a little sloppy," Berkery said. "In the second half, we didn't capitalize. We were out of sync."

The other reason for the low scoring was the Crimson's smothering defense.

"The defense was sensational," Berkery said. "Yale's offense was supposed to be their strength, but our defense completely shut them down."

While the Elis took 21 shots on goal, 19 of them were harmless.

Yale's explosive attacker Eva Vishio was denied the opportunity to move into ninth place on her school's all-time scoring list. Vishio was held to just one goal.

Harvard controlled the game so effectively that the team was able to run practice drills for most of the second half.

"We wanted to practice our settled offense, working on plays when we didn't get the fast break," Berkery said. "We didn't want to take the double teams on cuts to the goal."

"We still had a lot of chances, though."

Hey, when you're ranked number one in the country, you can slack off for a while, too.

WOMEN'S LACROSSE IVY STANDINGS 1. HARVARD  3-0 (7-0) 2. CORNELL  2-0 (5-1) 3. YALE  2-1 (3-4) 4. DARTMOUTH  1-0 (4-2) 5. BROWN  0-2 (6-2) 6. PRINCETON  0-2 (5-2) 7. PENN  0-3 (2-4)

HARVARD, 7-2 at the Yale Bowl Harvard  2  0  --  2 Yale  7  0  --  7

G: Yale--Humphrey, Vishio; Harvard--Downing (3), Berkery (2), Hansen (2). A: Harvard--Berkery. S: Yale--Sharkey (10); Harvard--Leary (11)