Amherst Squash Team Faces Crimson Firing Squad Today

The Crimson squash team, fresh off a 9-0 season-opening massacre of MIT, expects another cakewalk against a punctured Amherst squad at 3 p.m. today at Hemenway Gym.

Amherst has boasted a 44-4 individual game record over opposition in the last two years, but with only four returning lettermen this season, those days are in the past, Amherst coach Ed Serues admitted last night.

"When the bubble breaks, it breaks, and it's sure broken now," he said. "We've had it this year. We're dead. Only our top five men are competitive, but our bottom guys can't play worth a darn and the freshman team is hopeless."

The Sabrinas are 1-1 so far this year, having dropped 28 out of 29 individual matches against Penn, and then bouncing back to edge Franklin and Marshall 5-4.

The Amherst squad, which has lost all but one junior racquetman to off-campus projects this semester, is led by senior co-captain Peter Smith, followed by junior Brian MacDermott and senior Edward Tasch.

These three compose a strong nucleus, but the rest of the team is woefully inferior to former Amherst talent, according to Serues. "The first two are good squash players, there's no doubt about that, and our third man isn't bad. The rest of the material just isn't the stuff we've had in the past, though," he said.

The Harvard situation looks better than ever, as southpaw intercollegiate champion Peter Briggs and sixth man Pete Blasier have both recovered from minor back and toe injuries.

Coach Serues was anything but enthusiastic about leading his squad to face the powerful Crimson.

"We'll be there," he said.