Women's Water Polo

`Wick Looks to Defend CWPA Eastern Championship Title

ONEONTA, N.Y. - Fresh off winning another CWPA Northern Division crown, the 14th-ranked Hartwick water polo team will take the second seed into this weekend's CWPA Eastern Championships, Friday-Sunday at the University of Michigan's Canham Natatorium.

The winner of the three-day championship will gain the CWPA's automatic berth to the NCAA Water Polo Championships, which will be played in Palo Alto, Calif., May 9-11.

The Hawks, who have won the previous two Eastern championships, will carry an 11-game win streak to Ann Arbor. Hartwick will face a very familiar foe in the opening round in the seventh seed, Brown. The Hawks are 3-0 against the Bears this season, which includes a most recent 16-13 victory, Sunday in the Northern Division title game. The game is set for a 2 p.m. start.

"I feel this could be the most competitive Eastern Championships since I've been at Hartwick in terms of the number of schools that could either win the title, or the number of schools that have the ability to upset higher seeds," said Hawks' head coach Alan Huckins. "We have a rough opening match-up with Brown and it is going to be a dogfight. This is going to be the third time in three weeks we will have played them. At this point, I don't know if there is anything either team could throw out there that we haven't seen before. Whoever comes ready to play and has fewer mistakes should win."

The host, Michigan, will serve as the tournament's top seed and will face eighth seed Mercyhurst in the opening round. Other first round match-ups include third seed Indiana versus sixth seed Maryland, while fourth seeded Princeton squares off with fifth seeded Bucknell. The game between Princeton and Bucknell is a rematch of the Southern championship, a game which saw the Tigers edge the Bison with the game-winning goal as time expired in overtime.

Last year, Hartwick claimed its third Eastern title and gained the automatic berth to the NCAA Championships defeating then 18th-ranked Princeton 8-6 at Princeton's DeNunzio Pool. The Hawks downed Harvard and Indiana in the first two rounds to advance to the finals.

Hartwick, 26-10 overall, will bring to the tournament one of the top offenses in the country, which posts 12.8 goals per game. Kirsten Hudson (Wellington, New Zealand), the 2007 CWPA Eastern Championship player of the year and returning All-American, leads the offense with 91 goals and 139 points. Her goal total is fourth on the single-season list at Hartwick. Hudson has a chance to become only the second Hawk to post 100 goals in a season. Former standout Bronwen Knox accomplished the feat in consecutive years with 102 in 2005 and then a nation's leading 129 in 2006.

The Hawks have six other goal scorers who have posted 30 or more on the year. Ellen Sevigny (Mount Desert, Maine) and Christina Evans (Cedar Hills, Utah) rank second and third on the team with 61 and 58 goals respectively, while freshman Jessica McKee (Tustin, Calif.) has chipped in 49 goals on the year. Megan Dahl-Smith (Montreal, Quebec) has 48; Kaitlin Leonard (Montreal, Quebec) has 41, and Barbara Amaro (Sao Paulo, Brazil) has registered a season-best 30.

Hartwick goalie Jessica Dorman (Auckland, New Zealand) has made an impact in her collegiate debut season. Among the national leaders, the freshman has established a singles-season Hartwick record with 378 saves during the 2008 campaign.