How, Why a Varsity Crew Coach Wants to Find an Engine Room

The uninitiated who haven't followed the recent and mediocre fortunes of Harvard's crew may look with some askance on the news that Harvey Love has set his heart and soul on finding an engine room. With justifiable skepticism they may ask why a coach who has been training varsity oarsmen for the past four years should turn to engineering and architecture to find a winning crew.

An acceptable answer could come from those who watched with growing disappointment as last year's youthful and perhaps overly optimistic varsity eight won its opening race and then lost the next four.

Coach Answers

But perhaps the best answer comes from the coach himself, who will spend the next five months working with these same oarsmen--mostly juniors--and with two shells and a half worth of sophomores whose only major defeat as freshmen came last June from Yale's yearlings.

"I have strokes and seven men. I have bow oarsmen and number twos, but I haven't sustained power in the middle of the boat which I'm looking for. That's why I need an engine room," the gentle-spoken coach explains.

If he had continued Love might have repeated his comment after the varsity's defeat by Penn and Navy in the Adams Cup regatta in May. "We rowed too long in the same place." In lay man's terms this meant that the middle four didn't pull with all they had. In terms of the next two months of low stroking practice sessions on the Charles River it means integrating his potentially fine group of sophomores into as eight-man crew which probably will not contain a single senior by race time in April. Only three are currently rowing at Newell and none of these rowed regularly last season.

It also means taking full advantage of his more experienced junior oarsmen who are led by the first non-senior captain in many decades, Junior Jack Lapsley, one of the six sophomores in last June's eight, which bowed to Yale.

To seat specific men in specific positions this early in the season would be useless speculation. But any coach has plans, and among those who figure particularly in Love's are last year's stroke Carlo Zezza and his freshman counterpart and former freshman captain, Henry Jordan. Pushing Lapsley at seven will be former Yardling number seven Charlie Atkinson.

At the bow end of the shell Love is thinking in terms of last year's varsity bow and two men, Art Hodges and Pete Hobbs, plus sophomores Nick Tilney and John Eilefson--and "anyone else who wants to make an issue of it," in the coach's words.

Beyond these eight men Love refrains from naming names, for the middle of the boat is his engine room, which as he carefully points out, will be the object of an intensive search in and out of Newell Boathouse for the next five months