Matmen Ready for Eastern Tournament

Having concluded the regular season with a 21-17 loss at UMass Tuesday night, the Crimson matmen travel to upstate New York this weekend to do battle in the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association Championships at Syracuse.

Sixteen schools will take part in a competition for team points, but that aspect will be of secondary importance for two reasons. First, everyone expects Lehigh to run roughshod over the rest of the field as the Engineers have habitually done in recent years.

Lehigh is one of the few schools in the East where wrestling has moved into the athletic limelight. Five thousand people will stream up to Syracuse to cheer the squad on.

"Since no kid wants to embarass himself in front of that many people," Harvard coach Johnny Lee said yesterday, "they always get the most out of their ability."

The second reason that the team totals don't matter a whole lot is that the teams will go no farther than Syracuse, while the top three individual finishers in each weight class will earn berths in the NCAA tournament in Oklahoma.

This Eastern get-together has not been a particularly friendly place for the Crimson in recent years. Not since 1971, when Harvard took sixth place, has the school done well in the team competition. Last year, Harvard finished next to last. In the individual wars, it has been three years since the Crimson sent a grappler to the NCAA's. That last representative was Dan Blakinger (118 lbs.), who will be Lee's assistant coach next year.

But things look brighter for the Cambridge contingent this time around. The squad took nine of 15 matches this winter for its best record since 1972, and three of this year's grapplers have at least a chance of nabbing a place in the top three.

Two of the players with NCAA potential are the senior co-captains, lightweight Milt Yasunaga (126 lbs.) and heavyweight Kip Smith (UNL).

Yasunaga, who put together a fine 10-1-1 record this winter, should be seeded in the top eight and can advance, Lee explains, if "he lets go and wrestles like he can." Milt missed last year's tournament with an injury.

No Oaf He

Smith triumphed in ten of 12 bouts this year and probably is the Harvard grappler with the best chance to make it to Oklahoma. "There's no other way to put it," Lee said. "When Kip was a freshman, he was a clumsy oaf. He went 1-16 that first year. But he's worked like hell and improved and now he can beat practically everyone he faces, everyone but the really fine athletes."

And the Eastern tournament heavyweight class will be short on really super athletes, matmen like Princeton's John Seftnor, who is the man to beat. With any luck, Smith ought to finish second and could even nip the Tiger grappler if he can take advantage of Seftnor's one weakness. The Princeton heavyweight once broke his neck playing football. If he gets in trouble, he is incapable of bridging to avoid a pin. The only problem is, how do you get him on his back to begin with?

The third Harvard wrestler with a shot at the NCAA's was the team's best this year, junior Sal D'Agostino (177 lbs.). He rolled to a 12-1 record with nine pins, but must advance through a particularly tough field.

The favorite is Mike Brown, a freshman from Lehigh who went 20-1 this year, losing only two berths higher in the lineup to a 400-pounder from Iowa State.

Also wrestling at this weight is Princeton's Keith Ely, who made All-Ivy last year as a freshman and will probably make the second team this year behind the Yale grappler who administered D'Agostino's lone loss when Sal was forced by the team score to gamble for a pin. Ely and D'Agostino did not meet because the Crimson matman missed the Princeton mat with a rib injury.

Also representing Harvard this weekend will be Dave Albert (110 lbs.), Bob Cusumano (134 lbs.), whom Lee describes as a darkhorse, Bill Mulvihill (142 lbs.), Tom Bixby (150 lbs.), Jim Corcoran (158 lbs.), Ed Bordley (167 lbs.) and Fred Smith (190 lbs.).