Mermen Beat Cornell, 58-55; Triple Sweep Clinches Meet

Forced by the biggest snowstorm of the winter to spend four days in lovely, downtown Ithaca, N.Y., the Harvard swimming team almost suffered the added insult of losing to Cornell, the traditional doormat of the league, before pulling out a 58-55 win on Saturday.

All in all it was not a particularly satisfying weekend for the Crimson. With five events remaining in the meet they faced the distinct possibility of a loss to the Big Red. In fact, Harvard needed a sweep of the last three individual swimming events to avert a rather unexpected defeat. But improbable as that seemed the team pulled three straight sweeps to clinch the meet before the final relay.

The snow and the travelling created a situation that favored the home team and made the meet closer than it normally would have been. "They were in a good position to upset us," said Coach Don Gambril yesterday, "but I'm sure if we met them ten times that we would win ten times."

The meet was marked by slow times, off-days for Harvard swimmers, and an expected lack of enthusiasm on the part of the snow-bound Crimson, but it did not lack excitement. "When you have to depend on a 1-2 in three straight races, things are bound to get pretty exciting," Gambril said yesterday after the team returned.

Harvard, which was swept by Princeton in both the three and one meter dives, was the victim of another diving sweep at the hands of Cornell. Coupled with Cornell's 1-3 in the 50 yd. free, and another in the 100 yd. free, this sweep gave the Big Red a sizable lead going into the final events.

But sweeps by co-captain Dan Kobick and Paul Scott in the 200 yd. backstroke, Dick Baughman and Fred Mitchell in the 500 yd. freestyle, and Pete Mikhalevsky and Dave Brumwell in the 200 yd. breaststroke gave Harvard the win, and a winning season for Gambril in his first year at Harvard.

Particularly satisfying was the first by Kobick in his last meet of the season. Kobick, in academic trouble for most of the year, won his first race of the season, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

A Mile Uphill

Jim Davis, a freshman who has shown steady improvement all season long, had the meet's best performance, a second in the 1000 yd. free in which he lopped 26 seconds off his season's best. The other times were pretty slow when compared to last week's clockings against Princeton, but when you have to walk a mile uphill in the snow to get to the pool, no one can really expect great performances.

Dick Baughman, however, was an exception. Swimming the 1000 yd. freestyle, in which he holds the Harvard pool and school record of 9:49.2, Baughman not only won the race but went on to swim the 1650 yd. free in a new school record time of 16:34. The time eclipsed Steve Krause's old mark by over half a minute and was also thirteen seconds under the present record time for that distance at the Easterns.