Four Top Crimson Racketmen Vie For Honors in Intercollegiates

The famous squash season finally comes to a close this weekend.

Having won the Ivy and national titles for the fifth consecutive year, the top four varsity players vie today for individual honors in the National Intercollegiate Tournament at Annapolis.

Harvard's four entries are seniors Dinny Adams and Todd Wilkinson and sophomores Jose Gonzalez and Rick Sterne. The last Crimson player to win the intercollegiates was Vic Niederhoffer in 1964.

The top seeds in the tournament will probably be Penn's undefeated number one and two men, Maurice Heckscher and Howard Coonley, Yale's John West, and Princeton's Burt Gay, who won the New York invitation Tournament during Christmas Invitation.

Adams will be right up there with them. He lost tight five-game matches to Heckscher and West in team matches, but defeated Gay in the Princeton match.

Coonley, Penn's number two player, and runner-up in the tournament last year, edged Gonzalez by two points in a long five-game match during the regular season. With no one player standing out above the rest, Gonzalez and fellow sophomore Sterne are by no means out of contention and may upset one of the seeds.

Although the main purpose of the tournament is to determine the national individual champion, a team trophy has been awarded for the last several years on the basis of total matches won by all four players from each college.

The team championship depends to a large extent on the luck of the draw. For example, Harvard's number four player could draw Yale's powerful number one man in the first round, while Penn's fourth player might face Trinity's meagre top player in the first-round, or vice-versa.

Penn, with Heckscher, Coonley, Ed Serues, and Clay Hamlin, stands a fair chance of winning the team title again this year. Harvard, Princeton, and possibly Yale rate about even with the Quakers.