Sports Certificates Awarded to 459

Four hundred fifty-nine athletic certificates, which will serve as temporary wartime substitutes for the regular H.A.A. letter awards, have been engraved and are ready for distribution, H.A.A. director Carroll F. Getchell revealed yesterday.

Signed by Dean Hanford, as acting chairman of the Athletic Committee, the certificates will be awarded to all men who have taken part in informal intercollegiate sports contests since July, 1943, at which time formal competition was discontinued. For men still in residence, the certificates will be available this afternoon at the H.A.A. office, while in cases where men have left college for the armed forces, they will be mailed.

Informal sports for which the certificates will be given out include football, baseball, basketball, track, crew, cross country, tennis, soccer, squash, rugby, and lacrosse. Swimming, wrestling, polo, hockey, golf, skiing and fencing teams have been abandoned altogether for the duration, and consequently offer no awards.

While nothing new could be said concerning the present athletic set-up, Getchell predicted that the informal plan would continue until a sufficient number of upper graduates (freshmen are not allowed to take part in formal varsity competition) returned to warrant resumption of formal intercollegiate athletics.