Gridders Battle 2 Teams In Pre-Season Scrimmage

A pre-season scrimmage with a regular season opponent is more an exercise in coy maneuvering than a simulated game. Each head coach attempts to hide his team's strengths and weaknesses until the regular season begins. Saturday's scrimmage betwee the University of New Hampshire, Brown and Harvard was no exception.

The contest was the first major scrimmage of the pre-season for the Harvard gridders. An apropos cliche would be that it posed more questions than it answered.

No Kicks

The format of the scrimmage provided for all three teams to play each other in turn with no squads punting or kicking-off. The first string units would face the first string units of the other teams, the second units would face the second units and so on.

The first unit did well enough. It scored once on a pass from senior quarterback Milt Holt to pre-season All-American senior split end Pat McInally. Besides that scoring effort the first team sustained some other drives but the Crimson would not put it in the end zone a second time.

The first unit defense, a question mark this year, performed well enough. Junior Fran Cronin, a second team split end last year, will be starting at safety this year, replacing departed all-Ivy captain Dave St. Pierre. If Cronin matures quickly he could fill St. Pierre's shoes.

The second and third units did not get in much playing time so it is hard to determine how well they fared. Its performance will ascertain how much depth Harvard will have this year. These units will probably get in a lot of action in next Thursday's intra-squad scrimmage at Soldiers Field.

What head coach Joe Restic will probably be worried about is whether the defense will jell in time to prevent opponents from running all over them as its foes did toward the end of last season. Another question mark is whether the Milt Holt--Pat McInally threat will materialize.

Thursday's intra-squad scrimmage may answer some of these questions. But nobody will know for sure until the season opens against Holy Cross on September 28.