CREW DEVELOPMENT SLOW BUT STEADY

The University crew squad left Cambridge yesterday for Red Top, allowing Coach Muller slightly under three weeks of intensive training to get his men in shape for the feature contest of the year on June 22.

The season to date has been far from encouraging. On May 5 the Crimson eight failed to come up to expectations and trailed the Navy and Princeton in the annual triangular regatta on Lake Carnegie. Then followed a period of intensive drill, during which several changes were made in seating order and the work of the crew as a whole was gone over carefully and different faults taken up in succession.

The results of this systematized coaching came out on the afternoon of May 26, when the University oarsmen, though losing to the Cornell combination, nevertheless showed notable improvement.

Improvement Steady and Continued

Despite the two defeats, the season has seen steady and continued improvement and the chances for a victory over Yale are not as hopeless as they are generally painted. There have been numerous shifts this spring but there has been no indiscriminate throwing-about of men and each shift has been made only after careful consideration. Coach Muller personally has made the decision in favor of each shift and so far each change has proved successful.

In the task of developing a crew which could row his stroke effectively, Coach Muller's position has been unusually difficult. Starting out in the autumn with a mass of material at his disposal, he was faced with the problem of teaching his own methods to a group of men who, for the most part, had previously been drilled in at least two different systems of rowing, Coach Muller has had less than nine months in which to alter radically the rowing of every man on the squad.

Difficult to Find Adequate Stroke

One of the chief problems of the past season has been finding an adequate stroke--one who combined, effectively the principles of the new system with the natural abilities necessary to the position. The recent shifts have given a definite answer to the stroke question and have also put the finishing ouches on a rapidly improving combination.

The crew has gone to Red Top with the worst of the season behind it, and with confidence in its coach undiminished by its two defeats to date. Odds on the final race are now overwhelmingly in favor of Yale, but steady improvement, combined with the chances for continued and more rapid development at New London, makes a Crimson victory on June 22 something not altogether beyond the realms of possibility.