Soccer, Tennis Teams Dining In Style

After a shower and a quick change of clothing after capturing the Ivy League Championship Saturday night in Princeton, the women's soccer team celebrated in fine fashion. The squad wasted no time attacking some post-victory bubbly, courtesy of KELLY LANDRY's parents during the bus ride to their victory feast--a splended turkey dinner at CAT FERRANTE's house in nearby Kingston. Despite the sparse resources on the road trip, a few of the players refused to allow Halloween to pass without dressing up in costume. Reserve goalie BARB MAHON was particularly creative, decorating her black goalie uniform with some athletic tape to arrive as a skeleton. Co-captain DANA WARREN and striker SARAH CHUBB squeezed into the same pair of pants and feigned siamese twins, while midfielder MERRY ANN MOORE padded an over-sized pair of jeans and went as "Big Buns." Sweeper DEB FIELD donned some fatigues for the "G.I.Deb" look, while halfback LAURA MAYER combined red socks, a red turtle-neck, and green hospital pants to instill some holiday spirit as a Christmas Tree. Not outdone by his charges, head coach BOB SCALISE painted his face white.

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Soccer fans were privileged to see JOHN P. REARDON '60, director of Athletics, and PAT MILLER, assistant director of Athletics, cheering the Crimson to victory against Boston College Wednesday afternoon. Reardon also kept an eye out for his first cousin once removed. B.C. leading scorer ANN PORELL, sister of Kirkland House senior JOHN PORELL.

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The women's field hockey team seems to have devised a new way to practice. The day before the Yale match last week coach EDIE MACAUSLAND took one look at her hard-working squad and ordered everyone to take the afternoon off from practice and get some sleep. Instead, sophomore LILI PEW organized an impromptu mud sliding practice, with several team members joining her in headlong slides in the lakes of mud and rain water on the practice field. "we walked into the Field House when we were all done, coated with mud, and Chet in the equipment room took one look at us and said. 'You think we're going to clean you up?'" Pew laughs. The next day the squad--still in a mischievous mood--travelled to New Haven and broke into the Yale Bowl for a pre-game warm-up. After Eli officials kicked them out of the stadium, the stickwomen responded by defeating Yale, 1-0... The team will play in the opening rounds of the Eastern Championships against Providence College today. Should they win, they will go on to play Dartmouth tomorrow. If they prevail against Dartmouth, the squad could be on its way to sunny California to participate in the National tournament...

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The Harvard men's diving team may join this fall's women's cross country team as one of Harvard's most successful 1981-82 squads if the team performs as expected this season. The new outstanding freshmen. DANNY WATSON and STEVE FEYERICK, may well prove to be the key to many Crimson victories. Feyerick has won the New Jersey State Championships three times and the EISC's twice, and Watson came in fourth in the 3-meter outdoor Nationals last summer. Watson--an Ashland. Kentucky native--is, according to one member of the team, "one of the top three or four divers in the country right now." Joining the freshmen phenoms will be returning star junior JEFF MULE--last year's Eastern champ--and sophomore KARL ILLIG, who dramatically improved over the summer and qualified for the National Age Group Championships. Already tops in the Ivy League, the Crimson squad is now surpassed in talent only by six or seven scholarship schools like Miami and Indiana.

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The Harvard women's tennis team is dining in fine style these days. Last Thursday night coach DON USHER treated all sixteen members of the squad and the assistant coach, to dinner at the Ritz. The reason? Because they've been working so hard, he said. All coaches of other hard-working teams, take note and watch your wallets.

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If PAUL ERICKSON, a Harvard graduate student in English, has his way, Harvard may soon join such numerous colleges and universities as Princeton, Dartmouth, Boston University, and Boston College and form a women's rugby team. "It's time women at Harvard have the chance to play rugby," Erickson says, noting that Crimson men have played the sport for decades.

"People think that rugby is too violent a sport for women because they see so many ex-football players on the men's rugby squad, but well-played rugby is not a kill-person sport," he adds.

Women play rugby by the same rules as men do--with 15 people to a side--but female rugby is slower and not as rough, according to Erickson. In fact, Erickson thinks that women's rugby, when it is played well, is "the most elegant contact sport."

Erickson says women's rugby is changing: "It used to be a sport of 'sprains and strains' because women players were not in shape, but now women are getting much more confident about tackling and there are less contact injuries."

Erickson claims that he received the impetus to form women's rugby when he wore his rugby shirt around campus last year, and women often stopped him and asked him about the sport. "Many of them expressed an interest in playing the sport, but no one took the initiative to start organizing it," he says.

If enough women are interested in playing rugby, Erickson plans to act as advisor/coach to the nascent team, and several A-side men rugby players and women rugby players from the Boston area will aid in the coaching duties until a permanent coach can be found. And then--once the basics have been mastered--the women could start playing against other area teams and in rugby tournaments.

Although there was a small turnout at the first organizational meeting, Erickson hopes that improved advertising will boost the attendance at the next meeting on November 12 at 7:30 p.m. in the Quincy House JCR.

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