Aquamen Grab Lead In Eastern Tourney

In any race, it always helps to get off to a good start.

And yesterday at Blodgett Pool, the Harvard men's swimming team did just that, jumping out to a commanding lead in the first day of the 1986 Eastern Seaboard Championships.

After the first of three days of competition, the Crimson lies atop the 31-team field with 164 points. Princeton holds the second position with 114 points and LaSalle is third with 101.

Harvard swimmers captured two of the day's five events and claimed second place in two others.

"The team went out yesterday as a group and did exactly what it aimed to do," Crimson Coach Joe Bernal said. "Unfortunately, the tendency is to relax a bit after swimming strongly, so we must be able to recapture yeasterday's intensity and momentum in today's events."

Harvard Co-Captain Peter Egan won the first event of the competition, the 500-yd. freestyle, with a time of 4:23.91, touching out Princeton's Dan Veatch, who finished in 4:24.08.

The other Harvard win came in the 400 medley relay, in which Dave Berkoff, Scott Hoy, Egan and Chris Gould broke the Harvard and meet records with a time of 3:17.62.

The night's biggest drama occured in the 50-yd. freestyle when defending champion Randy Sprout of Cornell injured his knee during the start. When two swimmers were sent into the water to rescue him, Brown's Bill Barr, swimming in the next lane, protested and the race was ordered re-swum.

Under a counter-protest by Army's Coll Haddon, who swam in the other lane adjacent to Sprout without difficulty, the decision was later overturned and the race declared official with Haddon the winner in 20.44 seconds. Harvard's Keith Kaplan finished in a three-way tie for second in 20.88.

John Van Sant of Army won the 200-yd. individual medley and broke the meet record in the process with a 1:49.56 finish. Harvard's Berkoff repeated his second-place performance of a year ago in the event with a time of 1:49.80.

Shaun McLane of William and Mary won the final event, the 1-meter diving, finishing with a 499.75 score.