Golfers Miss ECAC Without Entry Form

Though neither the Harvard Athletic Department nor the Harvard men's golf team's coach would take the blame, an administrative bungle kept the golf team in Cambridge yesterday instead of Hanover, N.H., where the 1984 Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Qualifying Championships were taking place.

Because the application form never reached the ECAC in time, the Harvard squad was kept out of the last tournament of the fall season.

When John Thompson '80, the team's coach, realized Wednesday that the formality had been overlooked, he took up the matter with the Department of Athletics.

Administrators there told him it was his responsibility to enter the team, not theirs, he said last night.

Harvard Director of Athletics John P. Reardon '60 could not be reached for comment and the rest of the department yesterday refused comment.

"I had no idea that it was the responsibility of the coach," said Thompson, who played golf as a Harvard undergraduate and who started coaching the golf team last spring.

"Nobody accepts administrative responsibility for golf, no one has the time and it's too bad," he said.

Members of the team admitted disappointment yesterday over the missed opportunity, "It we had played as well as we did last week we would have made the final tournament," said Cher Nastala, one of the team's co-captains.

"We had a team that had started to play very well," Thompson said "It's a shame they didn't have a chance to play."

About 15 teams competed in five different tournaments on the East Coast yesterday, said Connie A. Huston, an assistant commissioner at the ECAC. The top two teams and the top 10 individual qualifiers in each tournament will advance to the championship tournament next week.

Any team that is a member of the ECAC and that sends in its information on time may compete in the tournament, Huston said.

She declined to say whose responsibility it is to send in the application, but she did say that a Harvard Athletic Department official had called her yesterday to receive some information about the tournament

About the missing form, Thompson said that he would have sent if it he had known about it "It was probably sitting on someone's desk," he said.