Yes, That Good

Spring was a little chilly this year for Harry Parker, coach of the Harvard varsity crew: with only two men back from last year's heavyweight eight that swept five straight college races, the Crimson's 106th rowing season figured to be, well, crimson. Imagine Parker's surprise when his young (five sophomores, two juniors) crew went through its first three races undefeated, then won the Eastern Sprint championships--defeating Archrival Yale twice, once in a preliminary heat, again in the finals. Imagine Yale's surprise. "They really aren't that good," insisted Bulldog Oarsman Dave Hathaway, before last week's annual Harvard-Yale race on Connecticut's Thames River. "They may be undefeated, but they're not unbeatable."

As it turned out, the Bulldog's bark was a good deal worse than his bite. At an even 4 miles, the Harvard-Yale crew race is the longest in the U.S.--more than three times as long as the Eastern Sprints. Yale's strategy, explained Hathaway, was to "stick with them in the first mile and pressure them afterward." Yale could have used more mucilage. At the end of a mile, the Bulldogs trailed by half a length; after two miles, Harvard's margin was up to three boat lengths. Rowing mostly at a steady 33 strokes per minute, the Crimson oarsmen swept to a six-length victory, clocked 19 min. 44 sec. upstream to break the 17-year-old Thames River record by a fantastic 8.8 sec.

If Harvard's claim to being the No. 1 college crew in the nation needed any further substantiation, it got plenty on New York's Onondaga Lake last week, where Wisconsin, which previously had lost to Navy, which had lost to Princeton, which had lost to Yale, won the Intercollegiate Rowing Association championship. Badger Coach Norm Sonju naturally had a different view: spring, he pointed out, is always a little late in Wisconsin. "We don't get out on the water until April," Sonju said, "but we always get up for this race." Way up. Trailing Navy, Brown and Princeton at various times during the 3-mile race, Wisconsin took the lead 1,000 yds. from the finish, held on to beat Navy by a deck length.

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