Sometimes taking a lot of first places doesn't do you any good. Such was the case on Tuesday night at the Greater Boston swim meet, for although Harvard took 9 of 12 races. MIT took the team title, much to the annoyance of the Crimson.

The final score showed the Engineers on top with 118 points. Harvard second with 93, and Tufts a distant third with 63, but only some rather strange circumstances prevented the Crimson from running away with the meet as they legitimately should have done.

This weekend's debacle at Ice Station Zebra (Ithaca, N.Y.) prevented the team from returning to Cambridge until late Monday, by which time the meet had begun. "The first diving event started when we were on the subway," said Skip Kenney, assistant coach.

Three members of the varsity who had gone to Cornell did not compete for the Crimson, and each could have won handily. "The main reason we lost was because we got snowed in in New York," Kenney said yesterday. Greg Huff, who could have won the 1000 yd. free, (one of the only events that the Crimson didn't win) was unable to compete because he could not make the 500 yd. free preliminary on Monday night and was mysteriously scratched from the rest of the meet by the officials.

In general, the cause of the Crimson's irritation over the meet was the organization, and most of the blame for the poorly run affair was placed on the meet's director, Charles Batterman, who, oddly enough, is also the MIT coach. "Our big complaint was that there was no format for the meet," said Kenney. "He (Batterman) changed it as he went along."

The lack of procedure and organization, especially with regard to entry blanks, "irritated me a little bit," said head coach Don Gambril. "He (Batterman) ran the meet out of his pocket."

Both Gambril and Kenney complained about the handling which Harvard received in terms of substitutions. The Crimson was unable to swim the 400 yd. freestyle relay because of a ruling by Batterman which prevented Harvard from substituting an alternate for a swimmer who couldn't make the meet. "The MIT coach thought more about winning the meet than of letting Harvard swimmers participate," Kenney said