Strong Performances in Field Events Carry Crimson to Win in Heptagonals

Powered by a strong showing in the field events, Harvard's varsity track team rolled to its eighth Heptagonal track championship Saturday at Philadelphia's Franklin Field, defeating runner-up Yale by over eight points.

The victory margin, though relatively small, was much larger than any of the pre-meet predictions, most of which rated the meet as a toss-up among Harvard, Yale, and Army. The final team scores showed Harvard with 67 1/3, Yale with 59, and Army with 55 2/3. Penn was fourth with 35.

Musclemen Score

The Crimson field men racked up 41 1/2 points for the afternoon, scoring in all eight field events, and winning four. Richie Szaro continued his astounding javelin performances, threw the spear 238 ft. 5 in. Saturday, shattering an 11-year-old Heps record. Bob Galliers got off the best long jump of his career, winning with a leap of 24 feet, one of the longest in recent years for Harvard.

Reliable captain Dick Benka easily captured the shot pat with a toss of 55 ft. 7 in., nearly three feet ahead of teammate Charlie Ajootian, the runner-up. Both performers picked up more points for the Crimson later when Benka finished second in the discus throw and Ajootian came in fourth in a closely-contested hammer throw won by Harvard sophomore Ed Nosal. Only 2 1/2 feet separated the top four finishers

Jumping High

High jumper Jim Coleman couldn't quite get up to his 6 ft. 9 in. leap of last week, but still managed to capture fourth place Saturday with a respectable 6 ft. 6 in. jump. Triple jumper Walter Johnson also came down from his last week's distance, but his 46 ft. 4 1/4 in. leap was good enough for third place. Frank Champi added two more points to the Crimson's total in the javelin, finishing fourth.

The Crimson runners were much less productive than their field counterparts Saturday as Yale dominated the track events. The Ellis captured a total of five running events, while showing signs of ending Harvard's dynasty in the distance races.

Junior Roy Shaw was the only Crimson performer to take a first in a running event as he edged Yale's Frank Shorter in a photo-finish mile run. Both had times of 4:09.1. Harvard's Tom Spengler came in third, and John Heyburn finished fifth in the race.

Fast Yalie

Shorter had better luck in the two-mile run, where he beat the Crimson's Dave Potteti and Tim McCloone in a meet record time of 8:50.7. The loss was Pottetti's first this season in the two-mile.

The 880-yard run saw another Yale victory in a traditionally strong Crimson even as the Eli's Steve Bitner edged Harvard's Keith Colburn by fourth-tenths of a second--1:51.9 to 1:52.3.