NOR'-EASTERS OF NEW ENGLAND HAVE BLOWN HARVARD RIGHT INTO HOCKEY GAMES SINCE THE TEAM HAD ITS SHOES STOLEN

Harvard, standing always in the nor-east wind of New England, has been a hockey college since the inauguration of the sport in the circles of intercollegiate athletics. Thirty years ago a group of Harvard students, with F. S. Elliot of the Law School and J. W. Dunlop '97 at their head, got out in the icy afternoons and froze their toes and their noses and their ears so that Harvard's hockey team today could work out in the finest indoor ice arena in New England.

A short stick rounded at one end and a hard rubber ball, together with the necessary ice, were all the implements for the first games of "ice polo", as the sport was known in Cambridge in 1896. There were no limits to the rink and so no player could be off side, and the games-generally developed into cross-country chases in which the man with the best wind kept ahead of his foe and scored goals.

Brown First Opponent

Brown was the first intercollegiate opponent of the Harvard team. Annual games were played until 1900, with even breaks in the scores, and in 1900 the first Yale game was played at the St. Nicholas rink in New York, with the Blue victor, with the Blue victory by a 5 to 4 count.

The Harvard hockey players had to battle everything but the police in their efforts to practice in those late winters of the Gay Nineties. An expedition, carrying all its worldly hockey goods with it, would set out in the afternoon, like Xenophon's Ten Thousand, looking for a place with ice. When it was found, camp was pitched, clothes were changed in the cold, and hockey was played as conditions permitted.

"Lost Puck"

Sticks and stones were pressed into use to mark the goals, and somebody's stray overcoat was the best apology for a net that could be found. Wild shooting sent the pucks into orchards and meadows and deep tangled wildwoods beyond the confines of the pond rink and no sandlot baseball game was ever more defendant on the finding of the only ball in the party than was the Harvard hockey team on the luck of the seekers after lost pucks.

Like swimmers stealing a dip in a wayside brook the skaters discarded their shoes and superfluous clothing at the side of the pond. Spectators, including small boys and ladies with mischievous and predatory instincts, watched the practice, and occasionally carried off souvenirs in the form of a shoe or two. Sometimes the home trek for the Crimson sextet was a walk on skates for a couple of uncomfortable miles.

Warm weather precluded workouts for the team, and trainers displayed ingenuity in devising means to keep their charges in condition. Some afternoons the team would assemble on Cambridge Common to sprint up and down and across the intricate pattern of boardwalks laid down there.

Just Rolling Along

One year the approach of an important game found the squad without work for two weeks due to the lack of ice. Resourceful as Ulysses, the manager produced a dozen pairs of roller skates. Up to the flat top of the Stadium trudged the team, and donned their rollers. A pistol was fired, and the men darted off to skate skate the top of the horseshoe and back. Tire trouble, specifically the loss of the rubber covering of the skate wheels, caused the withdrawal of all the entrants but one. He finished and still holds the Stadium roller skating record.

After 1900, Harvard and Yale met in annual games, and from the start of the series the Crimson maintained the superiority in the ice game that has kept Yale in submission since that date. Twenty-one of the annual series has been crowned by Harvard victories, and only six have gone the way of New Haven. Yale won the first game, in 1900, and took two out of three two years later after Harvard had scored a 4-0 shootout in the only game played in 1901. Through 1907 there was an unbroken run of Harvard victories.

Three Shutouts

A single-game win in 1908 was the only satisfaction that Yale got until 1917, the war year, when the Elis captured two of three games played, all of which were shutouts. Yale opened the firing that winter with a 2-0 victory in New Haven, and came to Boston to meet an aroused Crimson six that sent the visitors down to a 5-0 defeat. Back again in Connecticut, in his own backyard, the Bulldog greased up his runners and once more pinned a 2-0 loss on the Harvard's ans, but then the lean days started again.

The war paralyzed HarvardYale ice activity in 1918, and in 1919 the teams had to play in Brooklyn, which seemed to be a bad plan, since only one contest was played. Harvard fought off the Long Island damps better than Yale, and look the game, 4-1.

With the season of 1920, under the coaching of W. H. Claflin, Jr., '15, the post-war renaissance of Harvard hockey began. The first two years of this regimen were marked by four straight victories over Yale, in an advancing progression, with scores ranging from 3-0 to 13-1. Two more consecutive triumphs followed in 1922, but in the following year, the first of a long, ambitious schedule, Bulldog turned and bit back, and refused to be downed without the bitterest struggle that a Harvard-Yale hockey series has ever produced.

Finale a Catastrophe

Early in the season Harvard took the first encounter by a score of 3-2. By the end of February Yale had polished up its game, and at the meeting in New Haven held the Crimson skaters in check while themselves poking in the only tally necessary to win by a 1-0 count. The deciding game in the Arena in Boston was the climax.

The close of the regular three 15-minute periods found the teams deadlocked at 1-1. An extra five-minute session was called, and then another, but the Blue defense held off the repeated assaults of the Crimson forwards, led by Captain George Owen '23, one of the greatest hockey players to don a skate in a Crimson uniform.

A consultation was held at the close of the second overtime period, and it was determined to play until a score came--what is called a "sudden-death" period. After about a minute of play Owen shook loose, wormed through the Blue line to the mouth of the net, and flicked the rubber past the eager stick of the Yale goalie.

The next two years saw the greatest of Yale sixes, under the leadership of George Jenkins, stellar goal-guard, take Harvard twice in succession in the series. The 1924 mix-ups went in straight games, 3-0 and 6-1, but Harvard forced the next to three games. Since that time six successive games have gone to Harvard, all hard-fought, but decisive.

Much of the spice in the Harvard hockey seasons of the past few years has been added by the international flavor of the contests with Canadian colleges. The University of Toronto has been the most persistent opponent of the Crimson skaters, and the series between them now stands at four victories for each, with one tie game.

Toronto came out of the north in 1922 and sent Harvard down to a 6-1 defeat at the Arena, and repeated the following year at 7-5. The Canadians laid the Crimson low in 1924, by 2-1 in New York and by 4-2 in Boston. But in 1925 the story was reversed, and through the work of W. M. Austin '25 and Clark Hodder '25, Harvard eked out a 2-1 victory. A 2-0 triumph rewarded Toronto in 1926, but the invaders fell, 4-1, the next year, and tied at 1-1. Last year's contest resulted in a 4-1 win for Harvard.

McGill, the other perennial Canadian college to oppose the Crimson, has taken four victories without being even tied once. Pushing a 4-3 decision to three overtime periods at Madison Square Garden, New York, on New Year's Eve, 1926, has been the closest to victory that Harvard has come.Joseph Stubbs '20 (above) starting his second year as coach of the University hockey team, is putting his candidates through workouts in the Boston Garden. Captain John Tudor '29, (left), and H. W. Bigelow '30 (right) are among the veterans available.