Benka Takes 1st In Penn Relays Relay Unit Upset

Junior Dick Benka won first place in the shot put on a 58' 10 1/2" toss at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia Saturday and banished any lingering doubts that he is the East's finest shot putter.

However, Harvard's top-seeded four-mile team of Tim McLoone, Doug Hardin, Roy Shaw, and Jim Baker was upset by the Crimson's perennial nemesis, Villanova.

Benka's winning throw on the second day of the huge annual meet at Penn's Franklin Field shattered the Harvard record of 57' 10 1/4", which he set at the NCAA Indoor Championships last month. Benka took third place in that meet.

He also won the shot put events in both the Indoor Heptagonals and indoor IC4A's earlier this spring.

In the four-mile relay, Harvard lost by a mere eight-tenths of a second to Villanova, which won a record five championships at the weekend meet.

Hardin, Shaw, and Baker all ran sub-4:08 minute legs on the way to a 16:28.2 clocking but could not quite overtake the stronger Wildcat quartet of Ian Hamilton, Tom Donnelly, Charley Messenger, and Frank Murphy.

McLoone ran the opening leg in 4:13.1, followed by Hardin in 4:07, Shaw in 4:04.1, and Baker in 4:04.

Both teams broke the previous meet record of 16:39.4 set by Villanova in 1965.

The rest of Harvard's track team demolished Dartmouth, 113-41, in Hanover Saturday afternoon, boosting the Crimson's dual meet record to 3-0 for the season.