Harvard Smashes MIT, 12-1; Eyes Regional Tourney Next

In their first home game of the season Harvard's water polo team demolished MIT, 12-2, with an awesome show of water maneuvers.

The Engineers, who lost to Harvard, 9-1, in an earlier mismatch, gamely waded into the IAB, but were hardly in the match dominated by Harvard throughout.

The Crimson controlled the ball from the beginning and scored at will. In less than a minute of play Fred Mitchell, co-captain of the swim team, showed Harvard's superior skill by piercing MIT's sluggish man-to-man defense to score an uncontested goal.

Immediately afterward Peter Hursh pressed on with Harvard's ceaseless attack. The Crimson scored goal number 2 on a Hursh pass from the left wing to Mitchell positioned in front of the MIT goal.

The game's best performance, however, was turned in by freshman Wes Raffel of California. He is the team's leading scorer and tallied five goals yesterday.

Two of Raffel's scores came on exceptional plays, one after a long pass from the defense and the other after stealing the ball from an MIT player.

Only a few good defensive plays by MIT's Ken Epstein who guarded Raffel all night prevented the freshman standout from scoring more.

"We were just too overpowering," Raffel said after the game. "We swam around MIT and worked the fast break with far too much ease."

It was 9-0 in the middle of the third quarter before Epstein slammed the nets with the first Engineer goal. Alan Efromson slap-handed another shot past Harvard freshman goalie Brent Haywood.

We were relaxed and controlled the game well," coach and captain Phil Jonckheer said after the game. "We're an offense-minded club with fine shooters like Raffel, Mitchell and Pete Kellogg. But the defense with Hursh and George Magulac was also golden and provided us with enough momentum to carry us throughout the game."

Coming off last week's strong 7-6 victory over tough Brown, the Crimson look prepared for this weekend's All-New England Tournament at Providence.

"We should have no trouble," Jonkheer said. "When we get things together, we're the toughest in our league."