Calling The Turns

Captain Francis Clement Powers of the twice-beaten Ulenmen, long known around the Holyoke Street baths as "The Pro" definitely earned his old handle and as an added attraction established himself among the nation's top trio of collegiate middle distance swimmers as a result of his two upset victories last week over Yale's great sprinter, Howie Johnson.

Only Jim Welsh of Michigan and possibly his teammate, Jack Patten, can be rated above the Crimson captain, who turned in a sizzling 2:13.8 to win the furlong in the Eastern Intercollegiates at Annapolis last Saturday. Welsh swam a 2:11.4 earlier in the season, but Powers was clocked in 2:11.2 in a practice session and with two more weeks of training might conceivably chop off a few more tenths of a second

It would be a natural dog-cat-dog battle for 220 supremacy if Powers and Welsh were to meet in the annual N.C.A.A. meet which is being staged at East Lansing, Michigan on March 28 and 29, but at the present time it doesn't look as though anything of the kind is going to come off.

In the first place the H.A.A. hasn't got the money to finance the trip out to Michigan and in the second place Franny isn't too keen about spending two more dreary weeks of training. Paddling over a mile a day up and down the pool is boring enough when the rest of the team is doing it with you, but when you're all alone it's duller than Monday night at the Raymor.

If nobody from the Crimson tank squad goes out to the nationals it will be the first time since 1937 that Harvard has not sent at least one representative. That year the meet was held in Minneapolis, and there was walling and gnashing of teeth when Harvard failed to make the trek west because the H.A.A. could not gather together the necessary shekels. That was the year that Charlie Hutter and Pop Cummins first snapped Yale's unbelievable string of 163 victories.

This year's N.C.A.A. meet but for Bill Prew, Guy Lumsden and Andy Clark of Wayne University would take on the appearance of the long-awaited dual meet between Michigan and Yale. Both squads are bathing cap and shoulders above the rest that the country has to offer in the way of swimming teams.