Runners Enter NCAA Championship; Hewlett Contender for Individual Title

Harvard will send a full team to Monday's national collegiate cross-country championships at Michigan State.

Captain Bill Crain, Walt Hewlett, Dave Allen, Jim Smith, and Jon Chaffee, and possibly Roger Smith will make the trip for the Crimson.

Hewlett finished 12th in the meet last year and this time is a definite contender for the individual championship. George-town's Joe Lynch, the only man to beat Hewlett this fall, will be among the runners challenging Walt at East Lansing.

Teams from about 40 schools will be entered in the meet. About 15 other colleges will send runners but not a full five-man team. The pre-meet favorites are San Jose State, an easy winner last year, and Georgetown, the victor in last week's IC4A championships.

The Michigan State course is only four miles long and relatively flat in comparison to the Van Cortland Park course that Hewlett and Allen have run so impresively on the last two weeks.

The distance and the terrain may both work to Hewlett's disadvantage. The Crimson junior seems to run better as the miles increase, and he lost ground noticeably to Lynch on the flat stretches in last week's IC4A's.

The quality of individual runners outside the IC4A league is a question mark, but in the past the Eastern runners have more than held their own. Villanova's Vic Zwolak won the NCAA's easily over a slightly different East Lansing course last year.

Since Lynch shattered Zwolak's IC4A record last week and Hewlett missed his mark by a whisker-thin 0:00.2, it seems safe to assume that no midwest or Pacific coast runner is likely to outclass the Eastern pair on Monday.

Of the five teams that scored better than the Crimson squad last week, all except Navy will make the trip to Michigan. It's difficult to assess the quality of teams elsewhere in the nation, but judging on Brown's 12th place finish last year, the Crimson would seem to have a good shot at the top 15.

Last year Harvard sent only two runners to the NCAA's, Hewlett and then captain Ed Meehan.