A Wait-and-See Kind of Season

The Harvard men's volleyball team, which finished third overall in the Ivies last winter, started practicing this week for its upcoming season.

"It's a very young team, very inexperienced," Harvard Coach Ishan Gurdal said. "This is one of the youngest teams I've ever coached--there are a lot of freshmen. It's hard to predict how they'll do since I haven't seen the competition."

In the past four years, the men's volleyball team has had a consistently good record, capturing the Ivy title twice and making the East Coast Final Four once.

"It's going to be a wait-and-see type of year," Crimson Captain Adam Keller said. "I'm pretty optimistic about it. I think that we can make it work. We have to learn to work together and we can do a lot with what we have."

The spikers have just three weeks of total practice time before their first Ivy League match.

"We just started practice and in two weeks we're going on winter vacation and we don't practice during reading period or exams," Keller said. It's going to take some experimentation in the line-up to see how it works."

The probable starting line-up for the Crimson is composed of Scott Nielson, Adam Keller, Julio Toro, Robert Kwun, Ian Dyer and Shawn Bookin.

"We will have a solid core, but what will make the difference is whether the new players come through," Keller said. "If they do well then we'll do well. It's dependent upon the fifth or sixth player on the court."

In addition to its youth, the Crimson also has to contend with a change in its overall offensive attack, brought about by the installation of Toro as the new setter.

"It's like having a new quarterback, because he basically runs the plays," Keller said. "It's a whole new offense, but it won't be too much of a problem since we've played together before."

"The new bunch I have is very inexperienced. I don't think they've had much exposure [to play]," said fifth-year Coach Gurdal. "One thing I've noticed about Harvard athletes is that they catch on very quickly. If I can get the young crowd interested and into the game, then we should have a competitive year."