Thinclads Celebrate Year; Select Colburn as Captain

Harvard's track team elected junior Keith Colburn as its captain Sunday night, then wolfed down a chicken dinner at the Harvard Club, received a table full of individual awards, and strolled around the corner to the Eliot Lounge to hear teammate Spider McLoone perform on the piano.

A day earlier, the Crimson had dumped Yale, 84-70, to complete a perfect outdoor season and avenge last winter's Big Three meet loss at the Elis' track. The celebration was anticipated and deserved.

Colburn, a red-haired middle-distance runner, capped a comeback from a series of tendon troubles with a sparkling revenge triumph over Yale's Steve Bittner Saturday in the 880. His election to the track captaincy was not unexpected.

Last fall, Colburn was elected captain of next year's cross-country squad, and he added two other honors Sunday night, winning one of the three Helmus Improvement Awards and receiving a Paul Revere Bowl for his participation on the Heptagonal two-mile relay unit indoors.

Senior weightman Dave Bernstein, who came from total obscurity as a freshman to place in the Hep weight indoors and the hammer outdoors, and senior Charlie Ajootian, who captured the NCAA title in the weight throw indoors, captured the other two Improvement Awards.

Senior Pete Lazarus, who performed in the shadow of Hep titleholder Steve Schoonover for two years, won the Harwood pole vault award on his own Sunday night, and sophomore Ben Lounsbury received the Rand hurdling award.

Sophomore Ed Nosal and senior captain Dick Benka, who combined to sweep the shot, hammer, and discus Saturday and helped provide a comfortable point cushion for Bill McCurdy's runners, split the weight awards as well. Benka, undefeated in the shot, and Hep, IC4A, and Greater Boston champion, received the Little Shot Put Award for the third consecutive year, while Nosal won the Carver weight award.

There had been an open bar for an hour before dinner was served by the Club's buxom serving girls, and the combination of the two made it fortunate that all the awards were the same--Paul Revere Bowls. Distance man Spider McLoone, the squad's self-styled Ed Sullivan, officiated as master of ceremonies, making a futile attempt to keep the level of the banquet respectable.

It was a useless effort. When McLoone recieved the Nelson Unsung Hero Award, for his overshadowed performances in the two-mile, he mentioned that he had expected to awarded the "Unheroed Singer" award, in tribute to his legendary entertainment at the Eliot Lounge.

Both the level of the pun and the mention of the Eliot Lounge proved disastrous. The victory on Saturday, and the prior evening's celebration, termed "foul and dubious" by a Crimson middle-distance man, had prepared the squad for something neither the Club, the awards, nor the Friends of Harvard Track could provide.

For most of the season, when the Crimson field and track team needed moral support, they had congregated at the Lounge to hear McLoone soothe them with "Go Away Little Girl" in the confines of the Lounge's sensual interior. Sunday, McLoone did not let them down.

"I came to play," he said. As the single girls at the Lounge soon found out, so did his teammates.