Crimson Oarsmen Seek Winning Season

Anyone who had begun to entertain a shadow of a doubt about the abilities of Harvard's heavyweight crew coach Harry Parker only had to watch the finals of Olympic crew competition in Munich last summer to once again become a firm believer in Parker's invincibility.

Americans had done poorly for several years in international competition and the only solution was to experiment with the method of selecting boats for the Olympics. Parker headed the effort to seek out talented oarsmen for a national team. Formerly, the best college or club crew went to the Games.

Competition

Over 40 people showed up at the camp at Dartmouth last June to compete for 16 positions--one eight with cox, one four with cox and two spares. Six weeks later Parker had named his crews and eight former Harvard oarsmen were on their way to the Games.

In the final race at Munich, New Zealand took the gold but it was the United States which edged out East Germany for second place. One year before Americans had suffered a humiliating defeat at the Internationals in Copenhagen, losing by nearly 30 seconds to New Zealand and West Germany. In only three months Parker had accomplished the seemingly impossible task of re-establishing the United States as a world crew power.

A Legend

Parker's accomplishments at Harvard are so well known that he comes very close to fitting the cliche "a legend in his own time"--at least for crew fans who, though few in number, tend to be rabid.

Since taking over the head coach job in 1963 he has won the Eastern Sprints seven of ten times and has an overall record of 37 and 5. In the ten years previous to 1963 Harvard won the Sprints once and had an overall record of 16-24.

But those seven Sprint wins came in succession and Harvard has now dropped that all-important race twice in a row, losing to Navy in 1971 and to Northeastern last season. Critics were expressing doubts about the future of Harvard crew some months ago.

The performance of the national crew laid to rest any skepticism about Parker's abilities but Harvard's recent record does raise questions about the crew program. Why the losses and what does it look like for the Crimson this season?

Talent Loss

During the last couple of years the Crimson has not had the kind of talent it did during the late 60s. In 1969, for example, Cleve Livingston, Mike Livingston, Fritz Hobbs and Bill Hobbs all rowed for Harvard. Every one of those four and the coxswain from that year. Paul Hoffman, were in the Olympic boat at Munich.

It would have been too much to expect an influx of that kind of rowing talent into Harvard every year and too much to expect the competition to stand still. Parker's coaching methods are open to all and his best innovation--the seat race--is now in common use.

In the Fall of 1970 only two oarsmen from the previous year's freshman crew came back to row. The loss of depth hurt and the Crimson heavies lost the Sprints for the first time in seven years. The next year Harvard had quite a few sophomores and seniors out for crew but only three juniors, two of whom made the varsity.

Colleges in and out of the Ivy League--notably Penn, Brown, Navy, Northeastern and Wisconsin--have come on strong in the last couple of years and show no signs of declining. So the Crimson losses resulted from sharpened competition and a paucity of talent.

Even the most cynical and objective observer of this year's crew, however, has to like what he sees. It is the last year of that low sophomore turnout and two of the three seniors out are veterans of last year's varsity. In addition there are a number of juniors back, members of both last year's varsity and the undefeated J.V. Best of all, last year's freshman crew won going away in every race, including the Thames Challenge Cup at Henley, England, and nearly all of those frosh are back. In fact, it appears that, on paper anyway, this year's oarsmen are the best group in quite a few years and that much talent, along with Parker's ability, has to make the Crimson the crew to beat in the East.

Don't tell that to Northeastern, though. Last Spring's Sprint winners have five varsity men back and don't want to hear anything about Harvard "dynasties." The Huskies will probably be the toughest crew Harvard faces but every race will be difficult.

As far as the individual boatings go, the returning lettermen, co-captains Gene LeBarre and Bill Mahoney, and juniors Steve Carr and Dave Fellows, are at the top of the list. After that it's anybody's guess.

On the port side juniors Woody Canady, Peter Lowe and Jim Owen look like strong contenders along with sophomores Dick Cashin and Al Shealy.

Juniors Steve Row and Rick Smith are contenders on the starboard side as well as sophomores Ron Shaw and Ed Woodhouse. Coxswain David Weinberg should handle the steering for the Crimson for the second year in a row.

The next few weeks will decide the boatings for this season. Parker has already started seat racing in earnest. In a seat race two boats race any given distance and then pull to allow two oarsmen to switch across. Then the crews race over the same distance and any difference in margin indicates who made the boat go faster.

It's a grueling time of year for the oarsmen--not only do they lay seven months of training on the line but they must spend Spring vacation here as well, working out twice a day.