Tournament gets underway in Cambridge MA

Harvard's Barnaby courts were in action all day friday...

Stanford, UC Berkeley teams add west coast flavor: As the heavyweights Harvard, Yale, Trinity, and Princeton marched toward some interesting Saturday match-ups, a host of other teams from the east, midwest, and west gathered for the 1999 intercollegiates. With intercollegiate league president Bill Doyle emphasizing participation, almost all active college teams showed up for the competition which is divided into four divisions.

Several of the teams, notably Stanford and MIT, competed with coed teams, as they are club level programs lacking formal women teams.

In the top division, Yale and Amherst played out a close 5-4 result, Yale prevailing. Princeton survived a charged up Western Ontario (from London, Ontario and the only Canadian team competing) team, 6-3. The Princeton Western match was actually closer than the final result divulged.

The tournament national championship has been competed since 1956, with Ivy league teams winning all but three times: Williams in 1958, and University of Western Ontario in 1977 and 1980. Trinity is poised to break new ground this weekend!

The tournament format involves five divisions, with all entering teams divided into divisions according to their final regular season rankings. Teams one through eight compete for the Potter Trophy, and so on. A total of 37 teams are entered.

Here are some photos of friday action (all photos © copyright 1999, last photo courtesy Tim Morse, Carlisle MA):