Harvard-Radcliffe Sailors Finish Second Best In Four of Seven Competitions over Weekend

The three undergraduate sailing teams had to settle for second best as they managed four runner-up finishes in an ambitious schedule of seven meets over the long Veterans' Day weekend.

The Harvard varsity and the Radcliffe team both utilized their depth, splitting their squads in two as they engaged in three meets apiece.

The Harvard freshmen, in their only meet, finished second by three points to Tufts in a six-team meet at Harvard, although the Yardlings had led halfway through the meet.

Second Fiddle

Radcliffe sailors twice played second fiddle for Wellesley outfits which nipped them--at Wellesley on Saturday and again at Jackson on Sunday.

The first Radcliffe setback was by a single point. In the second defeat, the Radcliffe team finished second by three points. In a field of nine the performance was "especially impressive" according to Mike Horn, coach for all three squads, because Radcliffe boats capsized three times.

The other half of the Radcliffe team ran into rougher competitive waters at the two-day Yale Invitational involving teams from both the New England and Middle Atlantic Women's Sailing Associations.

In the one-divisional races, the Radcliffe sailors could manage only fourth place in a tough field of nine which included last year's national women's champions from Princeton.

The men's varsity squad failed to make the semifinals in a two-day meet at the Coast Guard Academy. In the final preliminary round, Brown defeated Harvard to knock the Crimson out of a third-place tie with Tufts and MIT, both final round victors.

In a simultaneous two-day competition at MIT, Harvard amassed a 9-1 record in Saturday's preliminaries despite using two freshmen. However, the Crimson lost two-out-of-three to the University of Rhode Island in the semifinals and were eliminated.

Hot Boathouse

The taxing weekend ended Monday at Yale with Hoyt Trophy competition. Normally the Brown Invitational, the meet was transferred to Yale last summer after the Brown boathouse burned down.

In a performance that even the Harvard coach had to call "quite remarkable," the Elis destroyed a field of 11 by belting their nearest competitor by 30 points. Harvard finished with its fourth runner-up of the weekend, edging Tufts for the second spot.

Horn said he was especially proud that at one point he had as many as 26 Harvard sailors on the water in several cities.