Water Polo is an easy sport to play if you happen to be a seal. Otherwise it's a rather exhausting experience.

There are a few hardy souls at Harvard, however, members of the three-year old Harvard Water Polo Club, who play the sport for real, and after winning only two games out of six last season, have high hopes for a successful campaign this spring.

Club president and starting center back Dick Smith says that the sport gives "swimmers a chance to stay in shape and stay in the pool" during the off-season.

Harvard plays in a league of Eastern colleges, dominated by St. Francis (N.Y.) and Army. St. Francis shellacked the Crimson squad, 17-2, last weekend in the season's opener. "We should be able to hold our own against the other teams in the league however," says an optimistic Smith.

This year the Harvard team numbers about 20 and has been working out since early fall in the Adams House pool.

"The main problem is that nobody's played the game before they got here, so we have to teach them the fundamentals," explains Smith.

Sophomore Jan Rus, who led the team in scoring last year, played enough in high school, however, to be an all-American, and many of the swimmers in the club pick up water polo fairly easily.

This year's starters, besides Rus and Smith, will probably be Carlos Daugha-day at back, John Bragg and Terry Flanagan at forward and Jim Babcock, the football placekicker, at goalie. Bruce Shore, an astronomy lecturer, plays forward in the exhibitions, but cannot play in league contests.

This weekend the club heads for New York to play St. Peter's, Columbia, and the N.Y. Athletic Club, and will face Brooklyn Poly, Fordham, Dartmouth, Cornell, and Army, before closing the season at Yale on the 13th of May.