Eight Varsity Tennis Players to Visit Navy, Army Next Week in Inaugural of '47 Season

With only two weeks of indoor practice behind them, eight members of the Varsity tennis team will take to the road next week, invading Navy and Army courts on Friday and Saturday.

Coach Jack Barnaby '32 yesterday released a tentative list of players who will make the trip. In ranking order, the six men who will probably face the service academies are Ted Backe, Max Tufts, Jim Coon, Murray Levin, Don Willner, and Bill Wightman.

In addition to the first six, Barnaby will take Steve Pratt and Ed Warren on the trip as alternates. The first outdoor practice of the season will be held at Annapolis and Barnaby may re-arrange the rank list at that time. Backe, the number one man, who ranked twelfth in the National Junior seedings before the war, is the only player who is assured of his starting berth.

Plagued by lack of practice space and inexperience in every position, the coach has had to make assignments on the scanty evidence of a couple of weeks of training in the Indoor Athletic Building gym.

The Navy team has also had its practice troubles this year, but is virtually unknown to the Crimson not strategists. Army boasts a high-ranking intercollegiate competition veteran named Oliver, but the Cadets are rumored weak in the lower positions.

Surveying his charges during practice yesterday, Barnaby, a member of the 1932 Varsity, predicted that "the team may be ragged at first, but we will be out to win."