The men's squash team narrowly squeezed by Yale, 5-4, and finished off its 1978 regular season with a contest that captain Mark Panarese fittingly described as "scary."

An early indication of the team's forth-coming trials was that Mitch Reese and Chuck Elliott, scheduled to play numbers six and seven, did not leave with the rest of the team at 9 a.m. Saturday. Instead, they started off for New Haven closer to noon, after Elliott had completed a civil service exam.

The match started at 2 p.m. in front of a crowd packed into the small galleries of the Yale facility. The odds took to the before going down to defeat, 10-15, 13-15 was having trouble with the traffic around Hartford.

Mike Desaulniers tallied his point quickly, disposing of the Eli captain, Larry Gile, in record time, 12-9, 15-5 and 15-9. Number three, Ned Bacon, handled his man, Andy Matheson, almost as easily, scoring a 15-12, 15-8, 15-12 victory.

The other two Crimson racquetmen in the first shift, John Stubbs (five) and Jeff Secrest (nine) did not fare as well. Stubbs grabbed one game from Mike Solovay before going down to defat, 10-15, 13-15, 15-5 and 10-15. Secrest went the distance, losing to David Barrett, 2-3, in five close games.

Nowhere in Sight

The initial action left the score tied, 2-2, and Reese and Elliott had still not arrived. Competition continued as the even seeds began their matches.

John Havens, the Crimson's number two man, and Clark Bain at eight finished first, and the scoreboard read Harvard 3, Yale 3. Havens outsted bulldog Tony Sanders, 3-1, despite being hit in the leg by by a squash ball, hampering his already limited mobility from knee troubles. Bain dropped his contest, 1-3, to Jim McBurney.

Captain Panarese was still playing after recovering from a 2-0 defeat to knot his match with Frank Fairman, when the Yale coach started making "forefert noises," as Whit Ford, the manager, termed it.

Sweat

Coach Dave Fish said, "I was afraid I would have to hand over the match, when Reese and Elliott rolled in at 3:30."

"You can imagine how I was sweating that out," he added.

Meanwhile, Panarese, who was playing the last head-to-head match of his collegiate career, put his game together to come back in the fifth game and record Harvard's fourth point, 14-17, 15-11, 7-15, 15-13 and 15-8. "For a second there I really thought I was going to lose my last college match," he said.

Reese blanked Andy Klingenstein, 3-0, to secure the win for the Crimson, ending its season on an upbeat and an 8-2 record. Elliott succumbed to Steve Fortunato, 2-3.

Somewhere in New Jersey

This weekend the racquetmer travel to Princeton to compete in the U.S. Intercollegiate championships. Harvard will send six entrants--the top five team members as they played at Yale and the winner of a challenge match between Reese and Elliott.

The favorites for the team trophy are last year's winner, the University of Western Ontario, and Princeton. However, Fish thinks that Western Ontario will probably be "looking at Princeton from the back."

"I feel really good about our team right now," Fish said. "Five out of the top six won at Yale and the guys are very ready to play," he added.

"We don't really have much of a chance to win the tournament," he continued, "but we are going to knock off some people who expect to walk through us."