Californians at Cambridge

Every race in the 57th Annual Intercollegiate Track & Field Championships at Cambridge last week set a meet record. This was not because the runners were noticeably faster than in other years but because the distances were measured in metres for the first time. The night before the first day's trials, 25 I. C. A. A. A. A. coaches, disgruntled because their proteges were deprived of the chance of breaking old intercollegiate records, voted 22 to 3 to return to distances measured in yards next year.

The meet was notable less for individual performances than for team competition between Stanford and Southern California who have between them won every Intercollegiate championship since 1924. Southern California won in 1950, 1931, 1932. Last week, because Frank Wyckoff, Dick Barber and 13 other last year's seniors were off the U. S. C. team, it looked as though Stanford had a fine chance to come back--even though everyone knew that Quarter-miler Ben Eastman has been off form this spring, that Pole-vaulter Bill Miller had hurt his foot, that Sprinter Les Flables had a bad knee. When Stanford qualified 14 men in the trials to Southern California's 15, the case still looked hopeful. The 14 were mostly field athletes whose records were sure to stand up for points while U. S. C.'s runners might be beaten in the finals.

Through a chilly grey afternoon a small crowd shivered in the Harvard Stadium watching Southern California runners pile up a lead of 42 points to 22, after eight events. Stanford's total went up as the field event results became final. After 13 events, the score was 42 to 42, with one more race to run. It was the 200-metre final. No Stanford sprinter had qualified and all Southern California's lean, blond, curly-headed Charley Parsons--son of Coach Dean Cromwell's college and teammate Charles B. Parsons--needed was a fifth place in the six-man race. The runners crouched at the start. The field spread going away from the mark and drove into the straightaway with Howard Jones of Penn ahead and Robert Kane of Cornell at his elbow. They were placed in the same order at the finish, with Parsons close behind for the third place that gave U. S. C. two more points than it needed for the championship--45 to Stanford's 42. Yale, Cornell and N. Y. U. tied for third with 16 points apiece; Princeton and Manhattan at 13 points, a notch behind them.

Beaten for the fourth year in succession. Stanford's Coach Dink Templeton could have blamed it mostly on mishaps to his two best runners. Stanford's huge John Lyman shot-putted a new world's record of 52 ft. 8 1/2 in.: Stanford men placed second and fourth. Henri Laborde won the discus throw as everyone knew he would. with two more Stanford men placed for points behind him. Bill Miller of Stanford tied Bill Graber of U. S. C. and three others in the pole vault. Herbert of Stanford won the 200-metre low hurdles which made three first places to Southern California's one--Bob Lyon, in the 110-metre high hurdles. But Southern California had an army of runners to get the seconds, thirds and fourths that count most in track meets.

Stanford's fast Ben Eastman did not even try to qualify for the 400-metre dash. At 800 metres, he was shut out with a fourth place and the race was won by the individual star of the meet, a dark-haired, sinewy Princeton junior named William Bonthron, who did what no runner has done since Cornell's John Paul Jones in 1912, won the 1,500-metre race as well.

Asked about Bonthron the day before the meet, Princeton's Coach Matt Geis said he would run in the 1,500-metre, possibly warm up the day before in the 800-metre heats. Bonthron won his heat in the 800-metre run. Next day he started out by winning the 1,500-metre race in 3:54. An hour later he was ready for a crack field in the 800-metre final. Eastman moved up to the lead in the home stretch, with five men bunched a stride behind him, Bonthron last of the five. While Eastman and Keller of Pittsburgh thought they were fighting for the lead, Bonthron took the outside lane by the Stadium wall and ran past the field to win by four yards. P: The night before the meet, High Jumper George Spitz dropped into a Boston cafeteria, asked for a piece of pie. Said the counterman: "Say, do you think you ought to eat pie, with you jumping tomorrow?" Jumper Spitz ate no pie, won the high jump next day with a new intercollegiate record of 6 ft. 6| in. P: For the last three years. Fordham's Joe McCluskey has won every race he has entered against undergraduate opponents. Second in many of them--but always beaten by at least 40 yards--has been Jackie Ryan of Manhattan College. Last week, instead of falling back when McCluskey sprinted at the end of the 3,000-metre race, Ryan held on. finally passed McCluskey 250 yards from the finish, went on to win by 25 yards. P: Pennsylvania's Bill Carr, still on crutches after his automobile accident two months ago (TIME, March 27), saw Jimmy LuValle, a lean Negro from the University of California at Los Angeles, win the 400-metre final in 46.7 -- time that approached Carr's supposedly unapproachable world's record of 46.2 in last summer's Olympics.

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