Runners Challenge Holy Cross, Tufts For Season's Opener This Afternoon

"Things don't look too good." That' s about all cross country coach Jaakko Mikkola had to say about today's triangular meet with Tufts and Holy Cross.

Mikkola has reason to be worried about the afternoon's outcome. It wasn't the fact that his runners have been turning in bad times that bothered him as much as the fact that he didn't see how they were going to improve any during the season. "We're victims of circumstance, with no place to practice."

Several hundred cubic yards of dirt have appeared in the middle of the Charles River trail up where they're building a now bridge. Last Friday's University handicap looks like the last bit of practice that will be done on that course this year.

Out in Medford, where practice was held last year, horse hoofs have left a powder-dry dust ankle deep. The once well-cared-for track is now filled with jagged rocks and flat spaces come no bigger than the palm of your hand. The Cambridge golf course has proved too hilly, and to top it all off, Mikkola can't even find an adequate means of transporting his runners from place to place during practice.

As if everything didn't look sour enough for the outcome of the still-distant Yale meet, Mikkola's immediate clashes with Tufts, led by Olympic-trained Ted Vogel, Holy Cross, and then Rhode Island surely won't boost morale.

Varsity runners: John Gogan (captain), Marvin Albee, Joe Leemings, Joe Rosen, Dick White, Joe Anderson, Joe Carlton, and Elliot Clark.