Six-love, six-one, and done. It was a hearty beating, like a tennis match between Serena Williams and Anna Kournikova, only on ice.
Women's hockey hardly broke a sweat this weekend on its tour of New York, picking up four points in the standings with a 6-0 win over Cornell and a 6-1 win over Colgate.
Princeton (14-6-2 overall, 7-3-0 ECAC) skated into Ithaca Saturday night and chewed up the Big Red (3-15-2, 1-8-1) in a 6-0 shutout.
The game-winning goal came 26 seconds into the first period when senior defender Nikola Holmes put the Tigers on the board with assists from junior forward Gretchen Anderson and senior forward Andrea Kilbourne. Just two minutes later, Kilbourne scored off passes from freshman defender Chrissie Norwich and Anderson to make it 2-0.
Princeton pushed the lead to 3-0 in the second when Kilbourne — the team's leading scorer — took an Anderson pass and punched home her second goal of the game at nine minutes, 17 seconds.
Anderson scored twice in the third period — off passes from Holmes and freshman defender Laura Stroessner at 5:47 and an unassisted score at 14:22 — and junior forward Lisa Rasmussen added the sixth goal, unassisted at 18:47.
Junior Megan Van Beusekom recorded her team-leading fourth shutout of the year in net. She needed just 17 saves to stop the Big Red and improve her record to 8-5-1.
Liz Connelly also made 17 saves in the losing effort for Cornell, which won its first ECAC game the next day with a 3-1 win over Yale.
The Raiders of Colgate (10-16-0, 2-8-0) provided little more challenge for Princeton as the Orange and Black rolled to a 6-1 win thanks to a hat trick from Kilbourne.
But it was a pair of freshmen that got the scoring started for the Tigers. Forward Heather Jackson converted a breakaway for the first goal at 4:49 of the first period, and forward Sarah Butsch added a second just 10 seconds later with assists from sophomores forward April Brown and defender Katharine Mag-lione.
Kilbourne scored her tenth of the year at 9:23 of the first to give Princeton an early 3-0 lead.
The Raider defense showed its teeth in the second, holding the Tigers scoreless, but the offense could not capitalize.
The Zamboni smoothed things over on the ice between periods but it could do little for Colgate. A refreshed Princeton team added three more goals in the final period to ice the win.
Kilbourne added two more goals and junior defender Angela Gooldy scored the other. The only bright spot offensively for the Raiders was Becky Irvine's goal at 2:35, which cut the deficit to 4-1.
Princeton ripped an amazing 65 shots at goalie Rebecca Lahar.
Senior Sarah Ahlquist had a more relaxed night, needing just nine saves to earn her third win of the season and two points for her team.
With the wins, Princeton moved to fourth place in the ECAC standings, one point ahead of fifth-place Brown and four behind first place Harvard and Dartmouth, with six games left on the Tigers' schedule.
Princeton's next ECAC action is this weekend when it takes on Yale in a home-and-home series.
A few more lopsided tennis scores in the coming weekends would be fine by Princeton.
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