Harvard Band Rouses Crowd At Davis Cup at Longwood

While most students take a break from extracurricular activities during the summer, members of the Harvard University Band played on. The band performed 90-second pieces during warm-ups and after every odd game at tennis' Davis Cup last Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

And although band members said they were pleased with their performance, they said scraping together an ensemble was difficult.

"We were somewhat limited because people had gone home for the summer," said Stacey L. Dworkin '01, a trumpet player and the band's tour manager. "People who were around pulled together and it worked out."

Dworkin said some band members even drove to the event from out of state.

"It was supposed to be a small group but we had enough people...and had a good time doing it," she said.

Band members were not the only Harvard students with a role in the event. Harvard's own James R. Blake, Class of 2001, who was also the topranked NCAA tennis player this year, participated in a practice doubles match against tennis star Pete Sampras and his double's partner Todd Martin. Sampras and Martin won the match 7-5.

The tournament--which was started by Harvard College graduate Dwight F. Davis of the class of 1900--has been held at Boston's Longwood Cricket Club ever since the first matches in August of 1900.

The matches pit teams representing 16 countries against each other in an international "battle for supremacy," according to its organizers.

The tournament consists of a series of four rounds which occur throughout the year, in which the winner of each round advances to the next. In last weekend's second round, the U.S. team--Sampras, Martin, Jim Courier and Alex O'Brien--lost to Australia, four matches to one.