"They were big, fast, blonde and tan."

And they scored often.

That was Harvard women's water polo Tri-Captain Kathy Kitayama's assessment of the competition from the West Coast at the national tournament held last weekend at Brown.

Three California teams outscored Harvard by a combined score of 64-11 to send the Crimson home without the national championship trophy, won by San Diego State.

But Harvard Coach Chris Hafferty said he wasn't one bit disappointed with the Crimson's sixth-place finish, the second-best showing by an Eastern squad.

"We've been trying to get to nationals for the past couple of years and we were pleased to even go," Hafferty said. "The team talent and scoring was less this year than past years, but I have to give a lot of credit to the team to get so far with less talented players.

"They stayed focused with the same goals as past teams, but they showed a lot more effort," Hafferty continued. I think they did the best they possibly could have this season. I'm very proud of them."

The fifth-seeded Crimson opened up the weekend against fourth-ranked UC-Santa Barbara and top-seeded San Diego State. None of the squad members or Hafferty knew anything about the Golden State squads before Friday's games, but the Crimson tried to keep calm against the higher-ranked Western schools.

But when the splashing subsided on Friday afternoon, Santa Barbara was on top, 23-3, and some were considering sending a diving team to scrape the Crimson off the bottom of the pool. Liz Brummond chalked up Harvard's first goal of the game in the third quarter when Santa Barbara had already scored three touchdowns. Tri-Captain Gillian Salton and freshman Skyler Satenstein rounded out the Crimson's field goal for the game with a goal apiece in the final quarter.

Harvard was without one of its goalies, Mel Berger, who was still suffering from a virus. Adding injury to injury, goalie Karen Flick rebroke a finger in the first half. Harvard's third goalie, Kelly McAnaney, was heavily taped up as well.

"Chris said it was the worst game we played all season," Kitayama said. "We had tunnel vision on defense and didn't help each other out. On offense we were making bad passes to the hole and we were throwing it away up top, too. We decided to just look forward to our hard games and correct all the mistakes that we made."

Survival is usually what's on a team's mind when it faces the top-ranked team in the country, and correcting mistakes is usually an afterthought. But the Crimson stuck to its game plan of setting up a double hole on offense, passing more accurately, working together on defense and containing San Diego's lethal fast break.

But that wasn't nearly enough to hold off the eventual national champions, who cruised by the Crimson, 26-4, on Friday night. Harvard held San Diego close in the first quarter and trailed by only a 6-2 margin at the first intermission.

But San Diego slowly pulled away, shutting down the Crimson's offense until the fourth quarter when the score was 21-2. After two straight drubbings, the squad was grumbling about the football-type scores. But Hafferty had a different view of the situation.

"San Diego didn't score a single fast- break goal all game," he said. "Sure, the scorewas lopsided, but so was the talent. They're thetournament champions. We executed very well and Iwas proud of how they shut down that part of theiroffense."

On Saturday afternoon, the Crimson was stilllooking for its first win, and eighth-ranked Brownwas the most likely team to give it to them. Butthe Bruins had played Harvard tough all season,and they weren't about to stop during the nationaltournament in front of their home crowd. The twosquads were tied at 1-1 after the first stanza,but the Crimson slowly moved ahead to record a 7-3victory while Brown splashed around with a sloppyoffensive performance.

"The team got its confidence back," Kitayamasaid. "We played well together and we knew wecould beat them. In the first two games, we cameout slow and we got down by so much, peoplestarted to lose it"

The Crimson almost lost it again againstseventh-ranked Michigan in the nightcap ofSaturday's slate of games, even though it carrieda four-goal cushion into the final quarter. ButHarvard wasn't about to let the Wolverines slipby, hanging on for an 8-7 win.

"We hadn't beaten them at Easterns," Saltonsaid. "We only tied them and then advanced by goaldifferential. We were really psyched to beat themoutright."

Harvard lost its momentum in its final match ofthe season against sixth-ranked Cal PolytechnicalInstitute, but fouls weighed the Crimson down as aconfident Cal Poly squad coasted to a 15-4trouncing.

Harvard stumbled to its traditionally slowstart, falling three goals behind in the firstquarter.

Skyler Defiler

Late in the second period, Satenstein wasposted up in the hole and had been taking a lot ofabuse from the hole defender. When the All-Easternfreshman was dragged under-water and given a kneeto the face, she surfaced and started to pound onher adversary in a fit of rage. The refereeejected Satenstein for the game for a brutalityfoul.

Normally, an ejection leaves the offending teama woman down for the rest of the game, but sincethis was the national tournament, the refereeallowed Harvard to sub in in order to keep thegame competitive.

Harvard took another blow in the third quarterwhen Tri-Captain Kate Ford was ejected for herthird major foul. Cal Poly then made easy work ofthe Crimson, to drop Harvard to sixth placeoverall.

"We obviously would've liked to have playedbetter, but we're psyched," Salton said. "It's thehighest ranking we've ever had at sixth in thecountry."

Haffery was equally pleased with his team'sperformance.

"At the beginning of the season I neverexpected them to get this far, but they did with alot of sacrifice and determination," he said