Behind by six points with one event remaining, the swimming team gained seven points with a win in the freestyle relay to pull out an exciting 57-56 win over Navy Saturday at Annapolis, Md. It was the second win of the season for the unbeaten mermen.

The meet was even closer than the score indicated since several races hinged on judge's decisions. Neither team has a clear lead over the other at any stage of the contest, and the 12 first places were split evenly between the two. Depth provided the one-point difference as Harvard held an edge over Navy in second-and third-place finishes.

En route to their win, Harvard swimmers set two Navy pool records. Dick Baughman took the 1000-free in 10:03.4, while teammate Fred Mitchell broke the 500-free record with a time of 4:52.2.

More important than the broken records, however, were the clutch performances by some of the other swimmers. "When you win a meet by only one point, you've got to have a lot of key performances," said Harvard head coach Don Gambril. He cited as proof Tim Neville's win over Rex Hand, Navy's best sprinter, in the 50-free, Dave Brumwell's win in the 200-fly, and Tim Chetin's two thirds in the individual medley and breastroke.

"But if I had to pick one performance as a key to our win," Gambril said, "it had to be Greg Huff's third-place finish in the 1000-free. Greg has been working extremely hard all season but hadn't placed, and it was great to see him pick up a crucial point for us," he added.

Gambril said he was "encouraged" by the performances against Navy. He was however, cautions about making any long range predictions about the season, since the team must face a tough Dartmouth squad the first weekend of reading period, and powerful Princeton, Penn and Yale the last month of the season.