Aquadudes Pummeled

The combined score of the three games was 60-4.

But Bill Wolff, tri-captain of the Harvard men's water polo team, asserted that "it's not really that sad--we all had a good time. The scores [weren't] the lasting impression."

The Crimson travelled to Providence over the weekend to play in the Brown Invitational Tournament against three California teams: Stanford, Univ. of Calif. (Berkeley), and Pepperdine.

These are the big boys of intercollegiate water polo--the squads that eat their Wheaties for breakfast and their opponents for lunch. And they're ranked 1-2-3 in the country.

The Crimson submitted to the tremendous crushing because, as Wolff said, "we want to become one of the elite teams in the East."

It's often been said that the best way to improve is to compete against the masters--and that's exactly what Harvard did. "The difference between East and West Coast water polo is the difference between college and professional football," Wolff said. "It was kind of awe-inspiring, just being in the pool with the guys who will be the 1988 Olympic team.

"We went there with the sole purpose of learning how to play polo," he explained. "They exploit your failings much better than the teams we usually play against. [Our mistakes] tend not to get noticed in most other matches."

Wolff cited the team's need to play a tighter defense, to react faster to changes of possessions, and to take advantage of 6-on-5 penalty situations ("power plays" in hockey lingo) as some of the areas in need of improvement.

The Crimson returns home to host the Harvard Tournament at Blodgett Pool October 3 and 4.

"Now we're going to have a great week of practice," Wolff said, "and next weekend we're going to come out and ravish some teams that couldn't even get in to the water with them [the West Coast powerhouses]."