Egg in Your Beer

Today the big, gray cumbersome freshman "Leviathan" barge will vanish from the Charles for another year.

Removal of the 16-oar training boat from active use today symbolizes, in effect, the end of the first stage of training for the Yardlings and of the weeding out process among crew candidates. Today freshman coach Bill Leavitt has posted in the window of Leavitt & Peirce a list of those rowers and coxswains who survived the final fall crew cut.

Out of a total of 115 oarsmen and 13 coxswains now on the Newell roster, about 90 will remain. Starting Monday, they are to be divided into light and heavy squads and will begin rowing in shells, most of them for the first time.

"We expect a gradual attrition among those who are now on the squad" said Coach Leavitt, "so that by spring there will be only enough men for six light and six heavy crews. Essentially, we now have the men who will supply our varsity material in coming years."

Despite the lack of a regular lightweight coach, training of both experienced and inexperienced squads is apparently going satisfactorily, the freshman coaches concur. Because of the low salary offered a lightweight coach, some members of the freshman staff seem to feel that volunteer graduate coaches may offer the only practical solution to the problem of training lightweight crews.

Since veteran coach Bert Haines retired in 1952, the HAA has been able to attract competent graduate coaches for the lightweights when necessary. Volunteer Dick Lincoln '53 was quick to point out that under graduate coaching Harvard developed the champion lightweight crew that went to Henley last year.

The year may bring problems for the freshman crew, however. Of the three volunteer coaches--McKursie, Lincoln, and Brown--the latter two cannot coach in the spring.

Prospects for the future are uncertain, but concludes Leavitt, "Though I don't think we have quite last year's height and weight, it's still too early to say."