THE SPORTS DOPE

After playing Ivy teams in Buffalo two years ago, and Boston teams in the Arena last winter, the Harvard hockey team is getting a Christmas-break treat: an all-expenses-paid trip to the St. Paul, Minn., Hockey Classic. There it will join Boston College, Colorado College and the University of North Dakota in a two-night (December 27-28) tournament that should be an interesting experience, if not what the doctor prescribed to recover from Monday night's shell-shocking.

This "Classic" was organized two years ago by St. Paul citizens who wanted something "big time" to match the sports attractions landing in twin rival Minneapolis. For three years the idea has theoretically been to match the best teams in the East with the best in the West, but this is the first year the promoters have come close. Like most sports promotion ventures in their infancy, however, finances have also been a major consideration, and for "best," one must often read "team with the lowest price tag that will be a good draw."

Harvard will be a big draw because of the large number of alumni in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region who have little opportunity to expend their school spirit. Alumni operations, for instance the annual state smoker, have been planned this year around the Crimson's appearance. The presence of goalie Bill Diercks and forward Chip Otness on the Harvard roster is another card: they both hail from Edina, a Twin Cities suburb, B.C. has always boasted a squad of Boston products until this year, when their big star is sophomore Tim Sheehy, not uncoincidentally from Minnesota.

The teams, of course, were selected long before the season began, but fortunately, for the tournament, both Harvard and B.C. have developed into excellent representatives of the East. And should the two both win or lose and meet on the final night, the promoters have a built-in "grudge" label they can attach, based on the Eagles' narrow 4-3 decision over the Crimson last week. This is an improvement over the tourney's first two years, when Colgate and Army, neither a major hockey power, were sole and weak delegates from the East.

North Dakota, which narrowly lost to Cornell, 1-0, in the NCAA semifinals last winter, has been in the tournament from the start. The Sioux should be very rough opposition for the Crimson on opening night. B.C.'s opponent, the Colorado Tigers, should not be so tough.

The hockey team is the only Harvard squad with competition scheduled for the Christmas break. The basketball team is usually entered in a tournament, but the best Athletic Director Adolph Samborski could come up with this season is the "Bluenose Classic" in Halifax, Nova Scotia, over January 5-6. The hoopsters have gotten few breaks so far: on their slate of seven pre-Ivy games they got to play Navy here. But they got stuck with a ridiculous string of road trips, to Wesleyan, Williams, and the University of New Hampshire. The other three games are home, saving them treks to B.U., Northeastern, and tonight, M.I.T. No one enjoys playing on the fourth floor of the IAB, but . . .

Other oddities on this winter's schedule find the track team running its last home meet three days after the season opened. Not having run at Northeastern's none-too-great cage in recent memory, the trackmen compete there twice this season. Hockey fans have been treated to four top-notch contests plus an exhibition at Watson Rink in what is, for most teams, a warm-up month. But although the skaters play 17 games after Christmas, only Penn, Dartmouth, Clarkson, and St. Lawrence come to Cambridge. In case you didn't notice, last Saturday found Harvard teams playing in New York City, Montreal, Canada, Annapolis, Md., Durham, N.H., and Ithaca, N.Y. That must be some sort of distance record.

No one believes Cornell's hockey team is nine goals better than Harvard's, nor that the Crimson can't compete with an all-Canadian squad, but many have been sucking sour grapes for some time over Big Red Coach Ned Harkness's recruiting tactics. Probably prompted by this discontent, the ECAC last week adopted a rule previously in effect for NCAA championships: any foreigner attending college here loses a year of varsity eligibility for each year he has competed in his own country over the age of 20.

Also at the ECAC meeting, it was interesting to note that Samborski was the only Ivy athletic director to vote to limit football substitutions. Harvard, which personally has the biggest, deepest, and most talented squad in the League, would seem to have the most to gain from unlimited substitution. He explained his vote by saying that some of the players he had talked to wanted to play both ways.