Crimson Aquamen Splash Yale, 83-30

The Harvard men's swim team ended its dual meet season with a bang on Saturday as it depth-charged Yale, 83-30, to become the sixth undefeated squad in Harvard swimming history.

"I'm just ecstatic. I'm on cloud nine," exclaimed first year Crimson coach Joe Bernal last night. Bernal was happy that his troops avoided a repeat performance of the New Haven nighmare of two years ago, when the inspired Elis upended the undefeated and league-leading Crimson.

"We weren't taking this one lightly. They were playing the meet up beforehand, and with their first year coach and everything it was a similar situation to two years ago," Bernal explained.

When the Elis' rookie mentor Paul Katz threw his top medley relay at the Crimson to give his team a 7-0 lead, the home crowd at Yale's hpstoric Kiphuth Pool was thinking upset.

But Harvard's aquamen had different plans, as they went on to win 11 of the next 12 events in a meet which turned out to be little more than a tune-up for this week's showdown with Princeton at the Eastern Championships.

The Crimson's superior sprint duo of Malcolm Cooper and Julian Mack led the charge, sweeping Yale--which was hurt by the fact that captain and top sprinter Harvey Hook had quit the team--in both the 50- and 100-yd. freestyles. The invincible Cooper won both events with times of 21.26 and 47.01, respectively.

The rest of Harvard's formidable starting lineup finally got a chance to show its stuff after weeks of taking pity on weaker teams, and it responded admirably. Freshman Michael Coglin, one of the unsung heroes of the new league champions and certainly one of the key men at the Easterns, won both distance events handily.

Co-captain Duncan Pyle raced to victory in the 200-yd. individual medley in the final dual meet of his spectacular career. Pyle, whose time was 1:59.52, was closely trailed by his surprisingly quick freshman teammate Kent Ashwood, whose time of 1:59.9 qualified him for the Easterns.

Harvard's absolutely awesome divers continued to dominate everyone. Saturday, Jamie Greacen took the one-meter event and superstar senior Mike Toal won the three-meter competition with scores of 294.85 and 320.65, respectively.

As always the Crimson's arsenal of bionic freshmen supplied the lion's share of the team's points. Backstroker Geoff Seelen stroked 200 yards to yet another impressive victory in a time of 1:58.07. Finnish phenomenon Tuomo Kerola frogkicked to his usual 200-yd. breaststroke triumph in 2:13.57. And of course, all-world Bobby Hackett whipped the field in the 200 freestyle.

In the final event of the afternoon, an all-Yardling freestyle relay of Mack, Ashwood, Dan Kiley, and Hackett ripped through the water in 3:08.85 to waste both Yale and a crew of upperclassmen teammates. More satisfying than Mack's strong leadoff time of 46.6 or Hackett's ridiculously fast split of 45.0 was the fact that the splits of both Ashwood and Kiley qualified them for Easterns in the 100-yd. freestyle.

Add to that Ned Cahoon's 100 free time of 48.2 (which also qualifies) and you see that Harvard, supposedly overmatched by Princeton's depth, will itself be quite well represented at Easterns this weekend.

The regular season is over, but on Thursday the real season begins...