In what marks the 25th anniversary of the Harvard women’s ice hockey team’s historic triple-crown season, the team’s national championship run and the grit, perseverance, and dominance the squad displayed throughout that entire season is still spoken about with hushed reverence.
On March 27, 1999, in Minneapolis, Minn., the No. 1 ranked Crimson team took the ice against the No. 2 University of New Hampshire Wildcats in the NCAA women’s ice hockey national championship game. After three periods of back-and-forth battling, the two squads entered overtime with the biggest prize in all of college hockey on the line: the national championship trophy. While most teams would be panicking in this situation, Harvard, with only one loss under its belt throughout the entire 34-game season, knew what it had to do.
The Crimson stayed calm and collected, defeating UNH in a nail-biter that clinched not just the championship, but also the coveted “triple crown” of victories — the Ivy League, the Beanpot, and the National Championship — putting the cherry on top of its historic season.
“Going into that year, Harvard had always been a building program,” AJ Mlezcko, a star forward for the 1999 squad, said in a past interview with the Crimson. “The big three that nobody could touch were UNH, Northeastern, and Providence College.”
The team started the season 3-0, an impressive start for the squad. In its fourth game of the season, it lost to Brown 2-4. This was a loss that it did not expect, and it lit a fire that catalyzed a new level of intensity for its remaining games. After that loss, the team won 30 games straight, including the Beanpot Championship, the Eastern Conference Championship, and the National Championship. The team defeated the UNH Wildcats, the alma mater of Head Coach Katey Stone, in both the Eastern Conference Athletic Conference finals and the American Women’s College Hockey National Championship.
The team’s 33-1 record may suggest that the entire season was easy skating. However, while some games had dominant performances, like a 9-0 win over Boston College in the Beanpot and a 15-0 win against Colby, the season was not a walk in the park.
The team sustained injuries just like any other, including one devastating blow to then-junior goalie Crystal Springer, who broke her collarbone during the regular season. After returning later during the season, disaster struck against Brown during its 5-3 victory in the AWCHA semi-final….
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