NYU Humbles Crimson Fencers, 20-7

It was a day late for the the Ground Hog, but when the Crimson fencing team emerged from its 48-day hibernation last Saturday, the best it could come up with against NYU was a sleepy performance and a 20-7 loss.

A Far Cry

Harvard, which swept through its first three matches in impressive fashion, found the Violet team that journeyed up from the Big Apple a far cry from the SMU's and MIT's that the Crimson had preyed on before the Big Sleep.

NYU gave Harvard an awesome display of balance, dominating all three weapons convincingly. The closest Harvard came in any of the events was a 6-3 loss in epee, where Ken Bartels, John Hirschfeld, and freshman Eric Reed each won a bout apiece.

In foil and sabre, Harvard's showing was bleary-eyed from the start. Crimson coach Edo Marion, forced to use epee man Chris Jennings in sabre because of Gordon Rutledge's tonsillectomy, did not get much from Jennings, or for that matter, from any of the regular sabre men. Jennings dropped three straight to NYU, and captain Terry Valenzuela, who is usually a sabre stalwart, won but one of three matches.

In foil, the Crimson couldn't shake off the slumbers of inactivity and lost all but two bouts. Phillipe Bennett took a shaky 5-4 decision but Marion said that the bout "could have gone either way--it was nothing to be proud of."

By far the best performance of the match--and in fact, the only positive performance of the afternoon--came from freshman John Wilinsky. Wilinsky, put in as a third round substitution, decisively put away Violet number two man Phillip Accaria, 5-3.

Superior

"His bout was the only convincing display of superiority that we had in the match," Marion said yesterday.

With the most demanding part of the schedule yet to come, Harvard must awaken from the doldrums if it is to be the serious contender everyone in Cambridge thought the Crimson would be. "We all thought we were better than this," Marion said yesterday. "But I guess we'll have to do a lot more work."