W. Water Polo Pounds Competition at UMass; Brown Among Big Victims

The Harvard women's water polo team notched three wins this weekend at the UMass Invitational tournament at Amherst, beating MIT 17-2 and Brown 14-6 on Saturday before sinking Amherst 20-6 yesterday.

The Crimson's only loss over the weekend was a 13-9 decision against the Metro team, a club squad made up of graduate students from the Harvard and MIT schools.

"Metro is always very tough," co-captain Suzanne Foley said. "They're so experienced."

Going into the tournament the Crimson looked to Brown as its most important game, having played the Bears tightly in recent match-ups.

"At least since I've been here we've played Brown pretty equally," Foley said. "We thought that the game would be really close but this time we dominated from the start."

"Brown was a very big game for us," junior Eve Stewart said. "We weren't expecting to win by as much."

The Crimson's leading scorer against Brown was junior Erin Piker, who filled the net with five goals to pace the Crimson victory. Piker also added six goals against Amherst the next day.

"Erin played very well," Foley said. "She was up for all the games and she was really aggressive."

Equally impressive was senior Jen Gahan who scored seven goals against Amherst and catalyzed the Crimson victory against Brown.

Sophomore Cheryl Frank got the nod as goalie for the tournament, as starting goalie and co-captain Amber Keasey was sidelined with an injured finger. Keasey should return to action by next week.

The Crimson hosts its own tournament next weekend as Wesleyan, Princeton, Penn State, MIT, Brown and Metro will all pay a visit to Blodgett Pool.

The Crimson has three weekends to go before it competes in the Easterns, which will be held April 29 through May 1 at Wesleyan College.

Perennial powerhouse Slippery Rock appears to have the number-one seed locked up for the Easterns with Maryland, Bucknell and Harvard all competing for the second seed.

"I think we're behind Slippery Rock in the Eastern League," Stewart said. "But we have a good chance of taking the second seed in the Easterns."

"Although we won't face Maryland or Bucknell until Easterns," Foley said, "the way we're playing we should definitely be a number two or three seed at that tournament."

The seeding will take care of itself though if Harvard can impress in its upcoming games, starting with next weekend's tournament in which the Crimson will enjoy home-pool advantage at Blodgett.