The women’s hockey team made history over the weekend after it completed its first ever sweep of Dartmouth and Harvard, shutting out No.6 Dartmouth 3-0 on Friday night before coming away with a dramatic 4-3 win versus No. 9 Harvard Saturday afternoon at Lynah Rink.

Although it would have been easy for the Red (2-2-0, 2-0-0 ECAC) to feel nervous heading into the weekend with the daunting task of having to play two very good, league opponents back to back, the Red did not allow itself to think too far ahead, instead focusing solely on one game at a time.Girl’s got game: Freshman Lauriane Rougeau scored and earned an assist against Dartmouth on Friday.

“This year we’re really trying to focus on taking it one game at a time,” said senior forward Kelly McGinty. “We were of course aware of Harvard heading into our first game, but we only thought about what we had to do against Dartmouth. After we beat them it was on to Harvard; we were riding high and knew that we could finish off the weekend strong.”

Friday night the Red was led by sophomore net minder Amanda Mazzotta, who notched her second career shutout after stopping all 22 shots the Green threw at her. Freshman defender Lauriane Rougeau recorded a short-handed goal and an assist, with sophomore forward Kendice Ogilvie and freshman defender Laura Fortino each adding goals of their own to complete the 3-0 win. Mazzotta was instrumental in the victory as she put on one of the best performances of her career.

“[Mazzotta] has been fantastic for us this year,” McGinty said. “In the Dartmouth game especially she had some huge saves on some penalty kills, I don’t even know how she got to the puck in time on some of them. She’s one of those players that will give you everything that she has at every single game and every single practice. It was awesome that she got the shutout because she deserved it.”

Saturday afternoon, the Cornell traded goals with Harvard all game long. The Red jumped out to a quick 1-0 lead only to see the Crimson pull back ahead 2-1. The Red then took the lead 3-2 at the beginning of the 3rd period only to see Harvard’s Katharine Chute even it up 10 minutes later. It wasn’t until senior forward Melanie Jue scored her second goal of the game with 3:03 left to play, securing the victory for the Red. Sophomore forward Chelsea Karpenko also added two tallies for the Red on the afternoon.

The hard fought win against Harvard, added to the earlier win against Dartmouth, could not have been a better way for the Red to kick off the weekend at its ECAC competition.

“As a team, Harvard has always been the team that we’ve been focused on trying to beat,” McGinty said. “They knocked us out of the playoffs twice since my class has been here. It was definitely icing on the cake beating them after we beat Dartmouth, everybody was just ecstatic.”

What makes the wins this weekend even sweeter for the Red is that there is so much room left for improvement; the season is still young. Considering the team has already swept two nationally ranked ECAC foes, the future looks bright.

“There’s definitely a lot of stuff that we’re going to work on,” McGinty said. “We know that we didn’t play our best and that we’re not close to our best right now. Everybody is really happy but it’s a long road ahead.”