Aquamen, Racquetmen Bombard Army

The handwriting just won't stick to the walls of Heminway gym for Harvard's current squash squad. Before their season started, it read "Nope, not this year."

But after the Crimson's third runaway victory of the year, this time 8-1 over a top-heavy Army squad Saturday, the handwriting reads "Maybe." And that "Maybe" is not indelible ink.

The man now holding the biggest eraser is first-ranked Bill Kaplan, one of only four returning Crimson lettermen. After a five-game sinking by a Navy opponent in the first match of the season, Kaplan has made a stunning bounce-back.

Letup

Saturday, after two easy wins, Kaplan lost his third game in overtime. "I guess I let up a little," Kaplan explained yesterday.

Coach Jack Barnaby '32 had one thing to say to Kaplan before the fourth game: "Go in there and win it." Logical enough. Kaplan went in and won it, 15-4.

Two sophmores, sixth and seventh-ranked Mark Panarese and Ned Bacon, celebrated their third varsity wins with three-game erasings of their opposing Cadets as did eighth and ninth ranked Ed Humphreyville and Scott Mead.

Big Guns Boom

But the battle at Army was to be won or lost at the top of the roster where the Cadets harbored their biggest guns.

Captain and number three man Jeff Weigand lost his first skirmish of the season to a belligerent Cadet in the third game. Again, after a Barnaby conference, Weigand launched his potent artillery at the hapless Cadet for the match victory.

In the fifth position, a cadet opponent unmercifully bombed Peter Havens, slowed considerably by a sprained ankle, with mean drop shots for the only squad loss.

Memoir

"With Weigand and Kaplan losing a game and Havens losing," fourth-ranked Cass Sonstein '76 reminisced yesterday, "the even-ranked positions who played next had to take Army seriously."

It may have been adrenalin which stimulated those next two racquetmen to victory, but don't bet on it. Sonstein, with his best performance to date, shut out his Cadet opponent.

"In the second game, after my opponent scored a point to make it 10-2," Sonstein explained," I heard him yell a loud 'Fight!' I guess he did fight a little harder. He did get three more points."

Number two man John Havens, avenging his brother's defeat, went for victory by any means. The freshman, ranked second in National juniors, blanked his Cadet for the team win.

Discipline

The Army crowd, traditionally spirited in home territory, was silenced by the pummeling. "Every five or so points, you would hear people clap," Kaplan said yesterday. "But then you wouldn't hear anything again for a really long time."

Surrender was unconditional Saturday. And as the Crimson returned to Harvard that afternoon, they returned with a sneaking suspicion that the walls of Hemingway gym might undergo yet another whitewashing come February.