FIFTY-FIFTY

The ill-success of the Harvard swimming team and the Yale hockey team offers a striking parallel in both causes and results. The thirteen to one defeat for the Eli seven is nicely matched with the triumph of their swimming team, who had little difficulty in gaining a 37 to 16 victory over the Crimson, though deprived of four of their best men. The records of the teams are also parallel. The Yale hockey players have at the end of their season, scored only three goals in return for 28 made against them by Harvard and Princeton; the Harvard swimming team has rarely been able to not more than the third places which must come to it when the respective teams are allowed but two men in each event. Both teams have been spared from even more humiliating disaster only by the efforts of their captains; and both have had to combat the poor spirit and breaches of training which go with discouraging scores.

More striking than this similarly in their records, is the fact that the misfortune of both teams is due to the same cause,--the lack of adequate facilities. In an editorial reprinted below, the Yale News, realizing the hopelessness of successfully carrying on hockey under present conditions, advocates that it be given up until an artificial rink can be built. Under equally disadvantageous conditions for training a swimming team here, it seems advisable to abandon it as an intercollegiate sport until a pool can be built. Such a step would hasten the construction of the pool, and would prevent the continuation of a sport which can hardly be said to bring prestige to Harvard if conducted under the present handicaps.