Lashing out against their MIT opponents last night on the Engineers' home turf, the Harvard varsity fencers sliced their way to a 17-10 victory, but the Radcliffe varsity was foiled, 9-7.

At the epee, Matt Simmons, Chris Jennings, and Eric Read turned in the strongest performances for the team. All three epeemen slashed to 3-0, 2-1, and 2-1 victories, respectively.

Co-captain John Major also poked to a 3-0 victory at the foil, while teammates Eric Mandelbaum at the foil and John Chipman at the sabre carved out 2-1 victories.

Mike Vastola at the foil and Russell Graham and Mike Bierer at the sabres were the losing Harvard fencers as all three gained only one victory each.

Strong at the Epee

Coach Ben Zivkovic said after the match that the Harvard fencers fought very well, "especially at the epee." He said, "They've been working very hard at the epee, and they're finally coming through." He added that he saw no reason why the epeemen should not continue to win.

While six of the nine Harvard fencers gained victory, a night of what Zivkovic called "misses and flats" brought defeat upon the Radcliffe varsity.

Epee-Pause?

"There was very good defense," Zivkovic said, "but every time the women made counter-attacks, they missed." Zivkovic added that if the women had scored on "half the attacks," they would have beaten the Engineers. "Misses and flat touches, which score no points," spelled defeat for Radcliffe, he said.

Captain Leonida Rasenas parried to the most disappointing result as she lost all four of her bouts. Kathy Laurie and Nancy Cooper thrust their foils to 3-1 victories, but Deborah Sze's three defeat performance resulted in an MIT victory in the close match.

The Harvard varsity, now 5-1 on the year, will meet Cornell on Saturday at the IAB. Radcliffe, currently 4-3, travels to Southeastern Massachusetts University this Saturday for their next bout.