Nascent Volleyball Team Nabs 6th in NE Tourney

A spontaneously generated Harvard volleyball team journeyed to Springfield last weekend for the New England Volleyball Championships. It returned champion of Eastern Massachusetts and the Greater Boston Area.

These titles were not hard to come by, however, since Harvard was the only representative from either division. Harvard finished sixth out of the 16 teams participating in the tournament.

The team came into existence last month when Rick Barton of Quincy House qualified Harvard for the championships by sending $15 to the U. S. Volleyball Association. He signed on his roommate as player-coach and filled out the rest of the seven-man squad "with guys who like to play basketball on Saturday afternoons."

Lack of training figured in, but Barton attributed the team's mediocre performance chiefly to unfamiliarity with tournament rules and the intricacies of team play. Harvard improved with each successive round, but was no match for the powerhouses of Springfield and Yale, its last two opponents.

Arch-rival Yale, whose team had been playing together for three years, had little trouble with the inexperienced Cantabs. "The best we could do was to force them to call a time out." Price said. That was at 5-5 in the first game, but when play resumed the Elis ran off 25 straight points for a 15-5, 15-0 win.

Yale finished second in the tournament, losing to Springfield in the finals.

Barton said that Harvard would need a full-time coach in order to complete interscholastically with the top teams in New England. There is an active intramural program, however. Last year's champion team from Eliot House was hit hard by graduation, and Barton sees little competition for Quincy in the coming season, which starts in three weeks. Six of the seven men who went to Springfield are from Quincy.