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Crimson Fencers Subdue Trinity Squad, 22-5

Whoever gave the Trinity athletic teams the nickname "Bantams" must have had the talents of the fencing team in mind. For in yesterday's fencing match with Harvard, the Trinity squad was very "bantamlike," showing a little unwarranted cockiness while being basically harmless.

And led by a clean sweep in both sabre and foil, Harvard humbled the Bantam squad, 22-5, in a match that rivaled only the two-hour bus trip to Hartford for excitement.

Sabreman Walt Morris and foilers Howie Weiss and Phillipe Bennett led the Crimson attack, sweeping three bouts apiece in an easy afternoon of fencing. Captain Terry Valenzuela, and Gordon Rutledge each won two bouts without a loss in sabre, and Dave Fichter and Ken Bartels, in foil and epee, respectively, also took two bouts each.

Valenzuela summed up the match when he said last night that. "It was a nice friendly little meet, we just killed them and left."

The afternoon was not all smiles though. The epee team, fencing without Chris Jennings and confronted with a legitimate performer for Trinity, lost 5-4, giving Trinity all its points in the meet. Junior Eugene White was particularly hard hit, dropping two bouts to the Bantams.

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Despite the reasonably convincing win. Crimson coach Edo Marion was not particularly pleased with the performance of the Harvard squad. "We didn't fence that well," he said last night. "Their team was simply outclassed. We are still too slow. There is none of the spark that we'll have to have against the better teams we'll face later."

Harvard fenced its "second string" from the second round on, using the match to give the less experienced performers a chance for bouting action. But even so, it wasn't much competition.

"They were better than we thought they'd be," Valenzuela said. "They weren't absolute bums--they were adequate."

Today Harvard faces its third match of the week, when the Crimson takes on a perennially weak Brandeis squad at 7 p.m. in the IAB fencing room. At 4 p.m. the J.V. squad will fence Concord-Carlyle Academy.

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