The Harvard track team rode herd on private game preserve -- the Boston area colleges -- in galloping to an easy point victory over second-place Northern in last weekend's Greater Boston set at Tufts.

Harvard won only three of 12 events, in the squad buried the Huskies, Boston College, Boston University, M.I.T., Brandeis and Tufts with its suffocating depth.

Take the pole vault, for instance. Not only did Pete Lazarus win with a meet record leap of 14 ft., but Steve Schoonover and Dave Bell were right behind in second and third. Lazarus's mild upset over Schoonover marked the third consecutive Greater Boston vault win for the Crimson.

Captain Wayne Anderson won the 50-yd. dash for the third straight year. And he broke his own meet record in the process -- streaking to a 5.5 second crocking.

Dave McKelvey provided victory number three and set a Tufts Cage mark when he copped the 600 in 1:13.3.

There were a couple of disappointments. Jim Baker and Bob Stempson and to settle for second and third in the mile and Doug Hardin and Tim McLoone got edged out by B.C.'s Bill Norris in the two-mile.

Ron Wilson, John Newman and Bruce Hedendal grabbed seconds in the weight, high jump and shot. Hedendahl's best-ever heave of 53 ft. 5 in. was followed closely by Dick Benka in third and Charlie Ajootian in fifth.

The slaughter might have been greater if Harvard hadn't been playing it safe for this. Saturday's Big Three meet at Yale. Coach McCurdy held out 100 ace Trey Burns to give his slightly injured leg a chance to heal.

Harvard's varsity fencers dropped their second Ivy decision Saturday to Penn, 17-10, obliterating their hopes for an unprecedented first or second place in League competition.

Takashi Iwasawa racked up his sixth consecutive Ivy foil victory by sweeping three bouts. Among his victims were Steve Permut, all-Ivy first team last year, and Michael Morgan, all-Ivy second team. Iwasawa also took three against Columbia, and he now has only the relatively weak foil teams of Princeton, Cornell, and Yale between him and an undefeated season.

A critical point in the match came in the second bout of the second round. Harvard had edged into a 5-4 lead by the end of the first round, but this quickly collapsed into a 5-5 tie when captain Bob Damus lost 5-1 to Norman Stillman. In the next sabre bout, Harvard's Paul Profeta piled up a seemingly indestructible 4-0 lead against Dan Cohen. But Cohen rallied with five straight touches to claim the bout.

That loss bolstered Penn's confidence and shook Harvard badly. "Psychologically, it was the end for us," said Crimson coach Edo Marion.

Harvard's sabre team, which lost 8-1, entered the match in less than peak condition. Damus played with an injured leg, and Dave Redmond was lost because of illness. However, Paul Profeta was back for his first match after a year's leave of absence. Profeta contributed the only sabre victory, a 5-3 decision over Stillman.

Yesterday the Crimson trounced Holy Cross for the second time this year, 17-10.