Aquamen Push Over Penn As Quakers, Dominos Fall

The Penn swimmers tried to use the domino theory in Saturday's meet with the Harvardaquamen, but things didn't quite fall into place as the Crimson squad knocked down the Quakers, 74-39.

Penn freshman Bob Speca set up a display of several hundred dominos in an intricate arrangement before the meet at poolside. In the pre-meet ritual for the Quakers, Speca, of the Johnny Carson show fame, knocked down the dominos that fell into a pattern reading, "Go Penn, Have Fun."

Inspiration

This exhibition must have inspired the Quakers, since they charged out to win the first event, the 400 medley relay, and take a 7-0 lead. That was success enough for the Penn team--the Quakers then walked into the dressing room claiming they were quitting while they were still ahead.

But they shouldn't have come back out, since they could not place higher than third in the following six races, and Harvard zoomed to a 48-13 advantage.

The meet turned out to be such a farce that Harvard coach Ray Essick decided to swim two divers (Tom Cook and Dave English) in the final 400 free relay. Even then the Quakers only won the race by a mere half a second.

There were only a few noteworthy races, and only a couple of good times. Wes Raffel swam a 47.2 anchor leg in the 400 medley relay to qualify him for the Easterns in the 100 free. Peter Tetlow flew in the 200 fly to record a 1:56.9 over the distance.

The 100 free looked more like an afternoon practice session than a race as Tetlow won in 11:36 and Paco Canales finished two seconds later. Canales' time was nearly two minutes slower than his mark against Princeton two weeks ago.

Tetlow and Canales did not really need to hurry, though, since the only Penn entry in the race managed only a 12:26 and was beaten by the Crimson swimmers by almost 50 yards.