Most of the first liners were on the sidelines, but a casual observer would hardly have known it from the performance. The Crimson fencing team overwhelmed inexperienced Dartmouth, 19-8, yesterday at the IAB.

The victory, Harvard's seventh in a row and third in the last five days, heightened team momentum as the Crimson built toward this weekend's Ivy League contest with Penn.

Harvard's sabre and epee teams so dominated their events that they alone amassed enough points to assure a team victory. Out of 18 bouts, the sabre and epee men won 14.

Little to Cheer

The Indians had little to cheer about. The closest that Dartmouth came to winning an event was in foil where they lost, 5-4. Throughout the action, though, the Indian's lack of experience was painfully evident.

The Crimson effort was highlighted by the undefeated performances of Loren Joseph and Gordon Ruttledge in sabre and John Hirschfeld and John Hawkins in epee. Each swept two bouts.

San Anderson, Steve Hobbs, David Moskowitz and Terry Valenzuela lent strong support to Harvard's undefeated fencers by taking two out of three contests apiece.

The appearance of Valenzuela and Ruttledge in the lineup was somewhat of a surprise, as they were scheduled to have the afternoon off.

Crimson coach Edo Marion explained after the match that Valenzuela and Ruttledge had come to him asking to fence as practice for this weekend's important matches with Rutgers and Penn.

Two out of Three

Valenzuela fenced three bouts, and, in each, Marion restricted him to a different form of action. In the first Valenzuela was allowed to fence as he pleased. He won. In the second bout he was restricted to attack actions. His Dartmouth opponent refused to follow the script, however, parrying Valenzuela's attacks to pin a 5-3 loss on him. Valenzuela continued this approach in the third round. Correcting the mistakes that had caused his second round failure, he coasted to a 5-1 win.

Ruttledge followed the same experiment. In his second and last bout, he alternated attack and parry-riposte action to ice the win.

The most valuable accomplishment of the match was that it ended the Crimson's season-long search for a third foil man. Marion, after watching yesterday's performance, decided that Anderson, coming off two good performances against Brandeis and Dartmouth, will fence against Rutgers on Friday and against Penn Saturday afternoon.