1930 CREW SEASON STARTS OFFICIALLY

The seventy-eighth season in Harvard crew will be launched at 5 o'clock this afternoon when candidates for the University and 150-pound crews foregather in the Smith Halls Common Room. Two hours later in the same place, the Freshman rowing season will formally get under way. More than 300 oarsmen are expected to sign up for rowing at these preliminary sessions.

The crews will continue the tank practice which was interrupted by the mid-year examinations, until the river is free from ice, probably during the early part of March. Crews have been rowing this year, contrary to the practice of preceding seasons, in graded order and four crews have already been selected in the first division of aspirants for University berths. The first formal work of the 1930 rowing season will come tomorrow, when, in addition to the tank work at Newell, there will be rowing on the machines at the Weld Boathouse.

Wealth of 1929 Reserve Talent

Only two sweepswingers from last year's first shell, Captain L.W. Dickey '30, and M.M. Johnson '31, will report today to the joint tutelage of Associate Coaches H.H. Haines and C.J. Whiteside, but there will be considerable talent on hand from last spring's Freshman eight, which was barely nosed out in June by the Yale cubs after they had led to within a few hundred feet of the finish line. There is also a wealth of material from last year's Jayvee boat, all the members of which, from stem to stern, are in College and eligible. This crew includes the following men, two or three of whom should be ripe for service in the first boat this spring: S.W. Swaim '31, who last year stroked the University crew against Tech and Cornell but who finally wound up as bow against the Eli juniors, H.W. Sturges '30, C.E. Mason '30, J.W. Hallowell '31, M.R. Brownell '30, A.N. Webster '31, R.I. McKesson '31, and P.H. Watts '31.

Stroking Possibilities

The problem of finding an adequate stroke oar which drove Coach Brown nearly to desperation last year is felt quite as keenly now, though still more candidates appear with several of the qualifications of a pacesetter. Besides J.E. Lawrence '31, T.N. Perkins, Jr. '31, Swaim, and Watts, who are considered among the most likely possibilities for the post, three others loom as potential candidates. They are A.H. Parker '32 of last year's Freshmen, R.W. Pearson '31, who stroked both the class champions and the combination, and Sturges.