Racquetmen Dominate Pair

The Harvard men's squash team was not a nice host to Trinity and Brown yesterday at Hemenway Gym. The Crimson whitewashed both schools, 9-0, yielding just five games in the two contests.

"You can win every match 3-0 and still have a tough challenge," Coach Steve Piltch said. "Today our guys played better than I expected for their first outings of the season."

It was an unpleasant homecoming for first-year Trinity Coach Jon Anz, who spent the last three years as an assistant at Harvard.

"It was great to come back to Cambridge, but this time it was like walking into a buzzsaw," Anz said. "We are pretty tough, but not nearly as skilled."

Despite its skill advantage, the Crimson did not take its competition lightly. Against Trinity, the squad played determined to win, sweeping seven of the nine matches, 3-0.

In Harvard's effort to rebound from two 5-4 losses to archrival Yale last season, yesterday's dominating victory provided the Crimson players with some early-season confidence.

"We sat on our hunches for a good part of last year, relying on our All-Americans to win the matches," Tri-Captain Raj Mahidhara said. "This year we can't depend on names alone. We all have a purpose on the team and we all have to fill it."

"The team is good but is determined to get better," Piltch said. "For them to do this everybody must take every game seriously, winning the easy ones just like the harder ones."

Brown--competing in the Ivy League for the first time this year--posed even less of a threat to the Crimson then Trinity.

The heart of the squash schedule and the fatigue test will come during January when the Crimson compete in the five-man nationals, and then face Penn and Princeton.

"In January we'll see what we are really made of," Masland said. "Today's wins were just part of the progression to the big matches later in the year. We need to preform well now to get a foundation to go back to the Nationals."