Yehia Scores Twice in First Quarter To Lead Booters Over Columbia, 3-1

Two first-quarter goals by center-for-ward Ahmed Yehia supplied the margin of victory Saturday as the Harvard soccer team made its strongest showing of the year in drubbing Columbia, 3-1, at Cumnock Field.

It was the fourth straight win for the Crimson, and the fifth in six starts. The game--the Ivy League opener for Harvard--indicated that Coach Bruce Munro's booters, an unknown quantity before game time, will have to be reckoned with in Ivy circles this season.

Yehia, known not as a hustling ball-player, but rather as one who has an uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time, used his ability to give the Crimson the early lead that, as it turned out, put the game out of Columbia's reach.

In the first minute of play, Scott Robertson, the left wing, crossed field with a pass toward the center. Yehia, with a pretty little fake, let the ball almost go by him before flicking it into the net with the side of his foot.

Columbia challenged briefly later in the quarter, but the aggressive Crimson forwards, displaying a teamwork that had been long in coming, controlled most of the action. There was a scare, though, when Lion wing Frank Kodah, a short, stocky African, boomed a corner kick into the penalty zone. The ball stayed there for several seconds while players from both teams took whacks at it until Harvard fullback Bob Gray finally cleared it.

Minutes later, Yehia, again cutting toward the goal, took a good pass from left halfback Abi Azikiwe, and caught the Lion goalie going the wrong way, drilling his shot off his opponents outstreached hands. It was Yehia's seventh score of the young season.

For the next quarter and a half it was solid defensive soccer, with both goalies, Columbia's Doug Watt and Harvard's sophomore sensation Dick Locksley, trading fine saves. Gray and his running-mate Dave Wright looked good for Harvard in their first real test of the season outside of the Amherst debacle three weeks ago.

But with two fairly potent offenses, the score was bound to be increased, and it was, midway in the third quarter on as fine a play as is possible to make on a soccer field.

Crimson insides Jaime Vargas and Lutz Hoeppner, who mounted attack after attack all afternoon, got together on a play that they couldn't have learned in America. It was like a give-and-go in basketball--Vargas to Hoeppner back through a half-dozen people to Vargas, all alone for the goal.

There should have been more goals in the final quarter, but the defenses tightened and the offenses choked on several opportunities.