Columbia Snaps Netmen's ECAC Streak

All good things must come to an end.

The Harvard men's tennis team finished second to Columbia in the East Coast Athletic Conference Championships at Princeton, N.J. Sunday. The Crimson had won the tournament--the winner of which moves on to the National Indoor Team Championships--for five consecutive years.

Harvard Coach Dave Fish said the netmen's performance was "on some ends superb [but] on others spottier than we needed to win."

The tournament involved 16 teams from the east, with campuses ranging from West Virginia to New Hampshire.

Harvard won three of six divisions, taking A and C doubles and B singles. Junior Arkie Engle won the B singles division with an unbelievable comeback in the semi-finals, setting up a 6-3, 6-2 victory in the finals over Princeton's Dave Gerken.

The Crimson's newly formed team of Engle and Co-Captain Peter Palandjian defeated Columbia's number-one doubles team, 6-4, 6-1, to take the top doubles title.

In C doubles, sophomore Hank Parichabutr teamed up with senior Dave Clark to crush the West Virginia team, 6-2, 6-3.

Coach Fish cited several players for outstanding performances, including Palandjian--who "beat two players ranked above him last year"--and Co-Captain Bill Stanley.

Fish also noted that Harvard lost one of the top-ranked players in the east, Larry Scott, to graduation last year. Coupled with the fact that Columbia sufferred no significant losses to the real world, Scott's departure may have made the difference this year.

"We've won [the tournament] for a number of years, just barely the last two years," Fish said. "We played just as well as before but we're inexperienced. While Columbia won with strength, I wouldn't count us out this year."