A B-SCHOOL HOCKEY PARTY

Ask any business executive to describe hell, and the answer you get may come close to the atmosphere at Bright Center last Saturday night.

Required dress consisted of baggy pants, mouthguards and helmets. The name tags were falling off, and even some of the red dollar sign emblems on the uniforms, with hockey sticks as bars, were missing.

Sixteen future MBAs--seven of whom were graduates of the College--hit the ice, trying to wrap up the First Annual John McArthur Tournament. After three rounds of preliminaries extending back to Friday night, the Harvard Business School Blades bumped and ground their way to victory over Amos Tuck (Dartmouth's business school) in the finals of the hockey tourney, 9-2.

The event had the ambiance of a yard sale. Volunteers operated the scoreboard and partisanship went along with the beer--hardly what most people expect at a B-School gala.

Brad Kwong, a forward on the Harvard Business School Blades and Captain of Harvard's 1984-85 hockey team said only, "The high and flying eighties are over."

Yet for all the informality, both teams took this game pretty seriously. The final was what sportswriters term "penalty-marred" and even included a bench-clearing brawl.

All for a foot-tall tin trophy? No. It's hard to believe in this cynical age, but this was a game for the game's sake.

It was about coming back, reliving college glories--especially for Corey Griffin '84, Peter Palandjian '87, John Cullinane '86, John Murphy '90, Andy Janfaza '88, Tim Barakett '87 and Kwong, who all played out their college hockey years with the Crimson in Bright.

For Barakett, who had four of Harvard's nine goals in the final, it was a family reunion. Tim--who is the 16th leading scorer in Harvard history, with 134 career points--took the ice with Blades Captain Bob Barakett, a self-described "journeyman from Canada" and Tim's brother.

For the 50 or so fans--who sang "Auld Lang Syne" after every Harvard goal--it was entertainment. Every time Harvard defender Frank Bazos came near the puck, his friends would scream "FRANK!" Amos Tuck loyalists would rhythmically rattle the plexiglass surrounding the rink for each Dartmouth score. John Cullinane, Sr. watched his son and namesake play hockey for the first time in ten years. Sue McHugh sold T-shirts, helped out with the scoreboard and watched her husband tend the Harvard goal.

"Generally, it's an excuse to come together and have some fun on the weekend," fan Bill Kennish '89 said:

For Yalie Tod Cowen, the fun was in releasing steam.

"People don't seem to realize how hard one works at business school," Cowen said. "Many school days run 12 to 14 hours. Its nice to be able to play hard, too," adding it was also good to get away from New Haven.

The two-day tournament also featured women's teams from the Yale School of Management as well as Harvard Business School, Tuck, and Amherst's undergraduate team (which replaced no-show Cornell).

Youth won out--Amherst beat Yale in the finals, 4-0. Harvard lost to Yale in the semis Friday night, 5-1. (That's an asterisked loss: Harvard's goalie was hurt and it played with a defender in goal, according to Harvard Captain Rene Nod).

Although McHugh said, "I hope there will be some more women's teams next year," the cheers for the women's final event, held between the men's games, was just as spirited.

The men's division included two teams from Harvard, Concordia of Canada, Tuck, Columbia and Babson. M.I.T.'s Sloane School of Management was rumored to have been there--but nobody knew for sure.

As fan Kurt Liebach said, "You never know what kind of team you're going to see...sometimes they bring along a lot of friends."