Spikers Drop Three at N.U. Tourney

The players on the Harvard women's volleyball team have got to stop getting up early in the morning and going to those all day tournaments. The grueling events just aren't very good for them.

Saturday morning the Crimson traveled cross-town to a Northeastern sponsored tourney and--boom, boom, boom Saturday afternoon it made its way back to Cambridge having collected three second defeats. The losses to Penn Eastern Nazareth College and Brown evened Harvard's season scored at 6-6.

Harvard didn't play poorly in its opener against the Quakers, a very good team. Penn's 15-8, 15-9 victory resulted from sparkling shot placement and an assortment of off-speed dink shots. Most of the time, the Crimson just couldn't get to the half to scoop it up before it hit the floor.

"Penn ran all its options." Harvard Coach Karyn Altman said. The Quakers had skilled players "that were able to hit the ball where they wanted to. We had to play exceptional defense to adapt to their game."

The other two Harvard defeats turned out to be more depressing, especially a 15-2, 15-3 drubbing at the hands of Eastern Nazareth. In a match that look only 31 numbers to complete, Harvard performed so lifelessly it virtually defeated itself. Against ENC not an extra-ordinary adept squad. Harvard commented several unformed enemy by serving poorly, hitting inconsistently and letting balls drop to the court between confused spikers.

Brown also downed Harvard without relinquishing a game, 15-13, 15-5. But this time, the Crimson allowed a 13-10 lead to slip away as the Brunets rallied for live consecutive pounds to capture the best game Hoovan's powerful serving resulted in a shaky Harvard receiving game. Unable to recover from that disappointing loss, Harvard resembled the dared team which occupied the event against Eastern Nazareth.

If the spikers work to live up to their potential, they're giving to have to perform more consistently, especially agreed the better teams they face. The Crimson will try to re group at Lowell Thursday.