New Coach Drills Ski Team With Strict Training Rules

If you go down to Dillon Field House late some afternoon, you'll find a large group of young men doing modern dancing, weight-lifting, tumbling, calisthenics, rope-climbing, and trampoline work.

Promptly at five, the group leaves the field house, jogs down to the trotting track on Soldiers Field Road, does about three miles of running and then jogs back to the Field House. Some days the group goes out to Waltham, where as Peter Berle says, "we run up and down hills around the insane asylum. When we do the 'ski walk,' the inmates wonder why they have been committed." The men also skate and climb mountains on Sundays.

The group is the versatile varsity ski team under the new and rigorous management of Coach Ted Lockwood and Assistant Coach Rick Eliot, former Middlebury ski captain.

The new training program is largely the work of Eliot who states his main objectives as: "strength building, endurance conditioning, and development of body control in the air." He also has taken lung capacity tests of all his skiers and is dickering with large concerns to obtain some plastic "snow" which will be placed on the JV football field for cross-country practice.

Seek "A" Classification

The main task of the ski team is to regain status in the "A" division which they held until the year before last.

The winner of the early January Lindenville Meet will gain "A" status. If Middlebury enters the meet, Harvard will not, and hence will remain in the "B" division. If Middlebury stays home, Harvard will enter and will probably win.

This year's team will be formed around three returning lettermen: Captain Don Stephenson, Al Arkley, and Pete Berle. Other likely prospects are Curt Beebe, Jim Breaksted, Charlie Stewart, and Bill Niemi. Eight will be chosen to form the team.

Harvard will certainly never be a major ski power; the miracle is that Harvard, located in a city not especially noted for near-by ski slopes, can have a strong team at all. This is a miracle that Lockwood and Eliot are trying to realize.