REFLECTIONS AT LOW TIDE

On Wednesday evening a strong Brown swimming contingent succeeded in shattering a Crimson winning streak that had extended to twenty-eight meets, and the audience of mostly Brown supporters that packed the pool balcony in the Indoor Athletic Building went properly berserk with joy. Bruin Coach Leo Barry's bald pate glistened with glory as he cavorted in the pool after his team had celebrated the victory by the traditional coach-ducking rite. George Gibbons, Bob Schaper, and Matt Soltysiak, the Bruin heroes, were mobbed by wildly enthusiastic teammates, and a squadron of reporters was besieging everyone with questions. Through it all,--the quarter-mile race that clinched the meet for Brown, the ovation that followed it, and the tiring session with representatives of the press afterwards--the man who was bearing the heaviest burden of the loss was standing erect and calm, surprisingly unruffled.

The man, of course, was Coach Harold S. Ulen of the Harvard Varsity. Throughout what must have been to him the greatest crisis in his career since his team first won from Yale in 1937, he displayed exemplary self-control and good sportsmanship. No alibis or excuses were to be heard from his lips; instead, he excused himself quietly from a gathering of reporters and officials and went over to congratulate the captain of the opposing team. For a man whose entire life is centered on his team, Hal Ulen took the defeat with an admirable grace that the Harvard athletic community may well be proud of. His thoughts in defeat did not consist of balancing the half-dozen if's of the meet, rather did he praise the men on his team who fought to the last for him and plan to build up for the future the men who failed him to some extent.

The comparison between last year's team, possibly one of the world's best, and this year's outfit demonstrates only too clearly to the spectator the appalling ups and downs invariably associated with a coaching career, and the very great effect a change in the quality of material can have on the success or failure of a team. The manner in which Coach Ulen has weathered his sudden change in fortune has marked him as a credit to the coaching profession and to his college.