Both Crew Teams May Win EARC

Every one of Harvard's undefeated heavyweight crews and once-beaten light-weight boats stands an excellent chance of taking the honors away from Cornell at the EARC Sprint Championships on Lake Quisigamond in Worcester tomorrow. After the morning qualifying heats, the finals in the afternoon promise to be the most exciting in recent years.

As the number one-seeded boat, coach Harry Parker's heavyweight varsity is officially favored to break Cornell's domination of the sprints. But the precise seedings don't mean that much; whatever the result, the top three seeds, Harvard, Yale, and Cornell, will probably finish very closely--within a half-length of each other.

Outside Factors

All things being equal, Harvard's varsity might have been the real favorite Saturday on the basis of last week's races and the overall season. Though Yale's 5:53 time in its upset win over Cornell last week was over a second faster than Harvard's, there were a number of outside factors.

In the first place, the Elis had the benefit of an "optimum" tailwind, of fierce competition from a surprised Cornell, and of rowing with what current there is at Princeton, where the course is almost always very fast.

But the Crimson varsity has been hampered this week by a number of minor illnessess. "We hope everyone will be well by Saturday," said Parker, "but we have not been able to make the progress this week that we had hoped. We will be happy if we can do as well as last Saturday."

For the lightweights, there is very much the same prospect of a rat-race. Cornell swept the lightweights honors last year as well as the heavyweight crown, and will go into Saturday's sprints as the only undefeated crew and seeded first.

But the Big Red defeated by a bare two feet an M.I.T. crew which had defeated coach Fred Cabot's crew, in turn, by only three feet. Though seeded third behind Cornell and M.I.T., the Crimson could "very definitely" pull an upset, said Cabot.

"We rowed a time trial Tuesday," said Cabot "which puts us very much in the thick of things."

JV Impressive

Seeded first along with the varsity heavyweights, the undefeated JV heavyweights have a very impressive record to date but the prospects for their race are unclear. Cornell, the second seed, has yet to find itself, and ift it does Saturday, anything could happen. The freshman heavyweight race will be a four-way battle between the first four seeds, undefeated Yale, Cornell, undefeated Harvard and Navy.

In the morning heats, the first three boats qualify. Harvard faces Wisconsin, the fourth seed, which has defeated M.I.T. handily but is otherwise an unknown quantity. In recent years, good Crimson heavyweight varsities have failed even to qualify, but this will not be a big fear Saturday.