Oarsmen Out for Revenge at Sprints

Take two boats of oarsmen. One has a 3-1 record, the other a 2-3 mark. Seed them for the Eastern. What do you get?

If you're the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges, the 3-1 Harvard varsity lightweights get seeded fifth in the Eastern Sprints, and the 2-3 Crimson varsity heavies get seeded third.

There's a reason, but it favors the lightweights more than the defending national champion heavies. It seems there's not an undefeated men's lightweight crew in the East.

Harvard and Yale were unbeaten going into the Harvard-Yale-Princeton race two weeks ago, but the Tigers appeared from out of nowhere and beat both of them, the Elis by one second, the Crimson by two.

All of which would have been fine if Rutgers hadn't beaten Princeton by five seconds earlier in the year.

Understandably, Harvard lightweight Coach Bruce Beall is expecting "some very tight racing. "The Crimson hasn't raced Rutgers, leaving the Cantabs in a situation where, says the coach, "we don't really have an accurate reading comparing us to them."

But there's a sense of destiny about the whole thing. "We're a boat whose time has come," predicts four-man Greg Williams. "We know what we're up against."

They're up against a tradition that says that more often than not, the winner of HYP wins the Sprints. But there's also a mysterious pattern that has Harvard winning the Sprints in every even-numbered year but one in the past 18 years.

The heavies don't have a tradition anything like that Harvard clearly leads every other competitor in number of Eastern titles won. The Crimson also has a national title to defend, but first-seeded Navy and second-seeded Brown stand squarely in the way.

The Crimson lost to the Bruins by two seconds in its second race of the year, the first contest after sophomore stroke Amos Gelb moved into the boat from j.v.

But now, says junior Chris McDougall. "I think we're faster than Brown, and I think we're getting faster than Navy."

Double practices a couple of days a week have helped, and so, apparently, do comparisons with last year's national champion squad. Only two members of that squad, which won the Sprints, returned this year, but says six-man McDougall. "If they could do it, there's no reason why we can't."

The heavyweight J.v., undefeated in dual meet competition, is favored to take Eastern laurels. And the heavy weight first freshmen have, if possible, even more to live up to than varsity.

The frosh shell has never lost a race. It's in its second year and last season housed the 6-0 crew that went to the world's most famous regatta, at Henley, England, and won the Ladies' Challenge Plate.

The first freshmen are fond of the expression "curvature of the earth" to describe their margin of victory. And while all the Harvard boats would like to see the competition on the horizon. Beall boils the Sprints down simply to "racing as fast as you can when the guy says 'Go.'"

EARC Poll

Heavyweight seedings

Varsity--1. Navy, 2. Brown; 3. Harvard; 4. Yale; 5. Penn; 6. Northeastern; 7. Cornell; 8. Princeton; 9. Syracuse; 10. Wisconsin; 11. Rutgers; 12. BU, 13. Dartmouth; 14. Columbia; 15. MIT.

Second varsity--1. Harvard; 2. Brown; 3. Northeastern; 4. Yale; 5. Princeton; 6. Penn; 7. Navy; 8. Cornell; 9. Syracuse; 10. BU; 11. Dartmouth; 12. Rutgers; 13. Wisconsin; 14. Columbia; 15. Holy Cross.

Freshmen--1. Syracuse; 2. Harvard; 3. Princeton; 4. Yale; 5. Brown; 6. Navy; 7. Dartmouth; 8. Rutgers; 9. BU; 10. Columbia; 11. Cornell; 12. Penn; 13. Wisconsin; 14. MIT; 15. Northeastern.

Lightweight seedings

Varsity--1. Princeton; 2. Yale; 3. Rutgers; 4. Harvard; 5. Dartmouth; 6. Columbia; 7. Cornell; 8. Navy; 9. Penn; 10. MIT.

Second varsity--1. Princeton; 2. Harvard; 3. Yale; 4. Rutgers; 5. Dartmouth; 6. Cornell; 7. Penn; 8. Navy; 9. Columbia; 10. MIT.

Freshmen--1. Dartmouth; 2. Yale; 3. Rutgers; 4. Harvard; 5. Princeton; 6. Columbia; 7. MIT; 8. Cornell; 9. Navy; 10. Penn.