Spikers Fall, Netwomen Tall, Aquawomen Crawl

In an NCAA qualifying tournament last weekend at George Mason, the men's volleyball team lost a chance to represent the East Coast Volleyball League in the NCAA finals, which will be held at UCLA May 4 and 5.

The Crimson seeded number four in the four team tournament, lost three straight games to top seeded George Mason on Friday night, 15-11, 15-10 and 15-3.

"We'd make great plays and then on the next serve we'd make a really careless error," said senior Jon Tanaka "We couldn't capitalize on our strong plays."

In a consolation match Saturday, the Crimson lost to three seeded Princeton.

"We were fairly flat after losing Friday and weren't playing up to par," junior Mo Nadkarni explained.

George Mason won the tournament, toppling Penn State in the finals.

The spikers will now move on to the Ivy League. championships next weekend where they expect to face Princeton in the championship match, Nadkarni said.

Women's Tennis

The women's tennis team crushed Brown, 9-0, on Saturday, without losing a single set, and in the process upped its Ivy League record up to a perfect 3-0.

"Everyone won pretty easily," said junior Elizabeth Evans, the Crimson's number one player.

The netwomen's strongest Ivy competition should come from Yale and Princeton. But an 8-1 victory over Yale last Friday leaves only Princeton (on May 6) in the way of an Ivy title.

Right now we're the team to beat in the Ivies," junior Debbi Kaufman said, attributing that to the Crimson's extreme depth this year.

She particularly stressed the contributions freshmen Kathy Vigna and Robin Boss, the number-three and four players respectively, have made to the team.

All the squad's members are undefeated in the Ivy play so far, with the exception of Boss and number two player Erika Smith Smith, who have suffered one loss apiece.

This weekend the Crimson will travel to New York for matches against Cornell and Syracuse.

Water Polo

After just one quarter of its match with Slippery Rock Saturday at the Princeton Invitational Tournament in Princeton, N.J., the Harvard women's water polo team led, 3-1.

"That was really a victory for us," junior Kristan Johnson said afterwards.

Never mind that Slippery Rock went on to a 13-5 victory over Harvard. The Crimson's first quarter advantage over one of the nation's most talented teams was a mild victory in itself.

A team that was granted varsity status just this year. Harvard proved over the weekend that it is quickly becoming something of a national caliber team.

Senior Captain Martha Wood explained that the Crimson's lone goal in the game against Slippery Rock was to prove itself capable of playing with a nationally ranked team.

In first round action of the tourney on Friday, the aquawomen dropped an 11-7 loss to Princeton, another of the nation's top teams. "We played well, but it took us a while to get into the game," Wood said.

Now 9-6-1 on the season, the Harvard squad will meet its nemesis Brown at 8 p.m. Wednesday.