"Unless He's Six-Feet-Four . . ."

One of the best crews that Tom Bolles ever coached clustered one day last week at the door of Harvard's boathouse. Said Coach Bolles, plopping a battered hat on his bald head: "It'll be rough when we get down to the basin, but the water may be like that at Syracuse, too."

Harvard's eight pulled down the river in short bursts, testing a variety of cadences. In the bow of his launch, Tom Bolles chewed gum, bellowed instructions through a megaphone and watched every move of his long-legged crew. A big man himself, he has no time for little men: "Unless he's six-feet-four and his hands hang down around his knees, he can't be a good oarsman." At Cambridge Bridge, the coach went wild yelling at a flock of dinghies to clear the course. In a practice spin at 2,000 meters, the varsity shell barely nosed out the freshmen. The time was slow and Coach Bolles shook his head gloomily.

Four days later, the largest flotilla of shells ever to compete in one regatta--32 in all--lined up on Lake Onondaga, N.Y. for the 2,000-meter Eastern sprint championships for varsity, junior varsity and freshmen. With the traditional coach's gloom, Tom Bolles said: "In a short race, some egg beater might win." But when the six varsity finalists (Pennsylvania, Navy, Cornell, Yale, Princeton and Harvard) got off the mark, it was clear that no egg beater was going to steal the race.

Using a 36-to-the-minute stroke, Princeton spurted into the lead. Harvard's 130-pound coxswain, William Leavitt, called a steady 32. Like a man at the wheel of a fast automobile, he had only to ask for power to get it. At stroke was Bill Curwen, watching the other crews carefully and waiting for the word to step up the beat. Past the halfway point, when the cox called for power, Harvard went up to a beat of 36, then all the way up to 41. Tom Bolles's varsity swept ahead to win by open water over runnerup Penn. The time: 6:48.8. It was the varsity's fourth straight victory of the season, and the third year in a row for Tom Bolles & Co. in the Eastern sprint regatta. The others also got something to think about for 1950. Harvard's junior varsity and freshmen crews won their races, too.

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