Crimson is Still on Fundamentals As Columbia Opener Approaches

"If we win four games will you consider it a successful season?" Art Valpey asked the Boston sportswriters at last winter's get-acquainted meeting. "Yes!" chorused the experts.

Since then, Valpey's lads have slogged through six weeks of spring training and have been belting the daylights out of each other on Soldiers Field since September 7. The answer is still "yes." The 1948 schedule is all meat. As of today, the Varsity is rated as underdog against Columbia, Army, Princeton and Dartmouth. Yale, Holy Cross, Brown and Cornell are regarded as tossups.

Harvard's coaching staff will play this underdog angle to the hilt. No creampuff opener has been selected. When the Crimson goes against Columbia a week from Saturday, Valpey's Michigan single-wing magic will be unveiled for the first time.

Plus and minus signs are about equally distributed as the Varsity enters the belt-buckle stage of pre-season practice. Here are a few of them.

Minus

There are plenty of towels of all shapes and sizes at Soldiers Field these days, but you won't find any of they crying variety. That's why Coach Valpey refuses to discuss the seven Sophomores who played first string Freshman ball last fall and have now dropped out of the picture.

First of all, the entire Freshman backfield is gone. Carl Bottenfield, injured in the Dartmouth game last season, has quit football on the advice of his Tulsa physician; fullback John West and half-back John White are scholastically ineligible to play this term; and Jim Lowell has decided to devote full attention to his studies.

So has guard Nick Callahan, last year's captain. Tackle John Kristopik is out for the season with a leg injury, and his running mate, Troy Sitter, has moved downriver to Boston University. That leaves only Paul O'Brien, Bob DiBlasio, Bill Rosenau, and "Chief" Bender as Varsity candidates.

Plus

Balancing this wholesale loss is the presence of several capable athletes who weren't around last fall. Tall Tom Guthrie, a 230-pound transfer student from Notre Dame (he played first-string end) has been moved to tackle. Guard Jack Coan started five games for Harvard's informal Varsity back in 1945, and now shapes up as one of the starting guards.

In the backfield, tailback Pote Petrille, wingback Nick Athans, and quarterback Hugh Edmonds, all veterans of former Crimson Varsity and Jayvee elevens, are now back following leaves of absence. Other men, notably tailbacks Jim Noonan and Chuck Roche, quarterback Bill Henry, and tackle Doug Bradlee are looking more poised than they did last fall for Dick Harlow.

Briefly, Valpey has a strong end corps, headed by Sophomore Bob DiBlasio; a potential all-American tackle in Howie Houston (he was included this month on several national all-American listings); four evenly-matched centers; and a flock of adequate backs.

Minus

Time. That's one of the handicaps Harvard must overcome. The practice clock is running out, and the Varsity is still more or less in fundamentals. "We're never going to get fancy until we have precision," warns Valpey. Pitchouts and end-arounds will presumably have to wait until the single-wing fundamentals are polished to gem-like brilliancy.

Fullbacks Chip Gannon, Paul Shafer and Sam Adams will have to spin with their eyes closed before the more intricate plays can be worked in. "We're a little behind schedule on offense," Valpey reports, "although we may know our fundamentals better than some of the other Ivy colleges."

As a result, only a few token T-formation plays have been grafted into the single-wing trunk. Jim Kenary; last year's passing whiz, who hasn't thrown from the T yet, was shifted from quarter-back to tallback earlier this week.

Plus

Although the true story will never be printed, last year's Crimson team was sick, mentally as well as physically. This fall, morale is high. During last Saturday's game scrimmage in the Stadium, for instance, the squad continued to slug it out despite a freak baby hurricane which roared onto the field with a burst of thunder, lightning, and rain and threatened to collapse the concrete colonnades.

Coach Valpey himself supervised play from the sidelines in a T-shirt and slacks, even though visibility was to bad that observers huddled in the pressbox could hardly see the field of play through the murk. Coach Valpey has a word for all this: "fire". It's a word that will be heard often on Soldiers Field this fall.