Varsity Mermen To Tackle Lions In League Meet

Harvard's varsity swimming team, sporting a 3-1 record, travels to New York City tomorrow to meet Columbia in an Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League contest which is not likely to be very exciting.

The Lions have been thrashed by every team they have been into the pool with this season, and are last in the league with an 0-3 record. Their closest loss was to Rutgers by 62-41, but Army, Navy, and Princeton have all beaten Columbia by at least 50 points in E.I.S.L. competition.

The Lions do have a couple of swimmers worthy of mention. Their most outstanding competitor is sophomore Homer Lane, who has been winning regularly in the freestyle events at 50 and 100 yards. Lane was the first Lion ever to break 50.0 seconds in the 100 free, and is considered the most promising swimmer in many decades.

Little Support

But Lane has little support. Don Schenk swims freestyle at longer distances, and usually manages to finish second, but swimming against Harvard's Steve Krause, he can certainly hope to finish no higher than second. Breaststroker Albert Schlelhmuf and butterflyman Greg Gastol are the only others likely to contribute significantly to the Columbia scoring.

Crimson coach Bill Brooks said he is not in the habit of worrying about the Columbia meet as Harvard has won 31 times in 32 tries, and does not expect any problem tomorrow. "They're not very strong this year," said Brooks, perhaps understating the situation.

This will be the last meet for the mermen until they face Princeton five weeks from now.