Spring Sports

Ask Francesca Den Hartog and the Harvard women lacrosse team what it feels like to own an entire season. Undoubtedly, the spring of 1981 belonged to the laxwomen. With Den Hartog and fellow sophomore Maureen Finn each averaging more than four goals per game, the squad systematically rolled over its 17 regular-season opponents winning every contest until the semifinal round of the national tournament in State College, Pa. The laxwomen lost just one more game--the consolation round of the tournament--and concluded the season with a fourth-place national ranking.

The men's tennis team shared some of the laxwomen's glory. Opening the season on less than a cheery note, the netmen lost four out of five matches during a spring break tour of the West Coast. Once it returned to Cambridge, however, the squad was all but invincible, winning every Ivy match it played and unseating Princeton to claim the League title for the first time in 16 years. By winning the Ivies, the netmen gained Harvard's first berth on the NCAA Championship Tournament, held in Athens, Ga. In the opening round, Crimson aces Howard Sands, captain Don Pompan, Bob Horne, Warren Grossman and Rob Wheeler all faltered against third-ranked Pepperdine, and only third-seed Mike Terner salvaged a win in the singles competition.

Like the netmen, the men's lacrosse team returned from its spring-break tour with a losing record. The laxmen's early 0-4 mark set the tone for the rest of the year, as injuries to key players like superstar sophomore Brendan Meagher left the squad that was ranked 11th in the nation and the first in New England in preseason polls with a 4-8 record.

The baseball team also failed to live up to preseason expectations. Most of the 1980 Eastern League championship squad had graduated, leaving a strong albeit young corps behind, and promising another EIBL title. But erratic pitching and overall inconsistency relegated the team to a fifth-place finish in the Eastern League. One highlight was junior Greg Brown's no-hitter against Penn. Yale's All-American moundsman Ronnie Darling also created a stir when he came to Cambridge, attracting nearly a dozen radar-gun-toting major league scouts and, of course, beating Harvard.

The Harvard crew team distributed an unusually high number of its t-shirts this season. The heavies finished fourth at the San Diego Classic, the season's opener, but they collected their share of shirts when they returned to the East. Princeton and the Administrative Board proved the chief obstacles for the lights, as the Tigers outrowed the Crimson in key races, and the Ad Board threatened to deny the lights permission to attend the Eastern Sprints during exam period.

While the oarsmen were busy upholding a 120-year tradition of supremacy on the Charles, the softball team, in its first season on the varsity level, was rapidly establishing a reputation as one of the finest squads in the New England area. With the help of three varsity basketball players--ace pitcher Nancy Boutilier, third baseman Pat Horne and six-foot-tall slugger Elaine Holpuch--the team won 14 games, scoring more than 15 runs in most of them.

Still playing at the club level, the rugby team turned in a season that would make the folks at the Athletic Department proud, winning the Ivies, the New Englands, the Easterns, and then finishing second at the Nationals behind Cal-Berkeley.

Even when Harvard's athletes were inactive this spring, the Soldiers Field complex was abuzz. Immediately after spring break, the finest swimmers in the country arrived in Cambridge for the United States National Swimming Championships and left American records galore on the Blodgett Pool record board. And in late April, five months after The Game, activity at the stadium became the focus of attention when an arsonist set the press box abiaze, causing an estimated $75,000 in damage.