Playing before packed crowds at the IAB Saturday and Sunday, the women's volleyball team placed fifth in the annual Ivy League Championships with a record of 3-4. Princeton won the eight-team round-robin tournament after beating previously undefeated Cornell in the finals, 15-12 and 15-13.

The fourth-seeded Crimson, in its first season as a varsity team, played well except for a disappointing first round loss to Brown, according to coach Karyn Altman.

"Our record for the tournament does not reflect how well we played--we gave Princeton, Penn and Cornell really good matches. What hurt us most is that we are a very slow starting team--it takes us too long to get going," co-captain Margaret Cheng, the team's setter and a first-team All Ivy League selection, said.

Even though the team went to bed early Friday night, it started slowly Saturday morning, dropping two games--15-11 and 15-10--to a Brown squad it had already defeated twice before this season.

The loss to Brown was also "a case of seeing a team too many times," Winthrop House resident Valerie Romero, one of three seniors on the team, said, adding, "they were really out to win."

The spikers roared back after losing to Brown to defeat Yale, 15-8, 15-10; Barnard, 15-12, 15-3; and Dartmouth, 15-13, 15-6, leaving them 3-1 on the day and tied for second in the tournament.

The successful execution of a new play in the team's repertoire--the "back set"--added in part to the team's early success. The play calls for the setter, who is facing perpendicular to the net, to receive the pass up from the back line, fake the set to the teammate she is facing, and, in fact, set up the spiker behind her in an effort to catch the other team off guard.

The "back set" had been tried only in practice, but "we felt we might need something new to do well in the tournament," Cheng said.

On Sunday, the team lost all three matches against the top three seeds, Princeton (15-5, 15-6), Penn (15-11, 15-8), and Cornell (15-10, 15-17 and 15-6).

The Crimson copped its only win of the day in the second game against Cornell. Having lost the first game, 15-10, and down 13-2 in the second, the spikers came back to win, 17-15, inspired by the play of senior co-captain Marlene Schoofs. More than once Schoof's shots silenced the Cornell fans and left the Cornell players dazed.

The spikers, whose 3-4 record and fifth-place finish is a marked improvement over last year's 0-6 performance and last place finish, were content with their performance. "Considering the fact that most of the other schools have a more extensive volleyball program, which means more funding and recruiting, we did really well. We never got down on ourselves," Cheng said.

"We lost because Penn, Princeton and Cornell have a little more experience and a few fancier shots--we didn't beat ourselves," Romero, who suffered through most of this season with an injured elbow, added.

Yardling Coco Trumbell's play provided a pleasant surprise, Cheng said, adding that Trumbell played with predictable zest, but tempered her enthusiasm and skill with an uncanny court sense rarely found in freshmen.

The Crimson squares off against UConn this Tuesday in preparation for this coming weekend's state championships at M.I.T. Harvard, entered in the division 2 flight because of its first-year varsity status, is likely to do well.

Women's Volleyball Ivy League Championships

Princeton 6-1

Cornell 7-0*

Penn 5-2

Brown 4-3

Harvard 3-4

Yale 2-5

Barnard 1-6

Dartmouth 0-7

*Lost to Princeton in playoffs