Falling Off the Edge Track City

Even the Holiday Inn in Philadelphia had something track-like about it. This came in part because the place was loaded with members of track teams. I walked nonchalantly into an elevator after coming back from a political headquarters (there were elections in Philadelphia on Tuesday and track weekend was the last weekend of campaigning).

I walked into the elevator calmly reading some political brochure or other and ran into a guy about twice my size in a green tracksuit calmly carrying a hammer for a hammer throw. Somehow reading seems to go better with elevators than the hammer throw. But that's probably just a fetish.

The heps were run in Philadelphia a week after the Yale-Harvard meet and the day before the Big Race between Marty Liquori and Jim Ryun. Keith Colburn, a former Harvard track star, was also running in the mile, but for some reason the press seemed more interested in Ryun and Liquori.

For Harvard and Yale trackmen, the meet before the Heps was pretty important. In some senses it was more important than the Heps, since the Harvard-Yale meet decided who will go to England for the Oxford-Cambridge meet.

The joint Harvard-Yale team is usually chosen through negotiations between the Harvard and Yale head coaches. The two coaches simply try to agree on a team. When they can't agree, the top two scorers in each event in the Harvard-Yale meet get to go.

Since the coaches couldn't agree (they even re-opened negotiations in the Franklin Field grandstand after the Heps meet), the seemingly simple top-two formula was used. What the formula resulted in was the selection of 21 Men of Harvard for the 31-man squad. It also meant that outgoing Captain Walter Johnson, who ran third in the high hurdles behind teammate Dewey Hickman, will stay behind, and New Captain Bud Wilson, who ran second in the 220, won't be able to go because he was 2 seconds behind freshman Austin O'Connor, who will get the trip.

Franklin Field wasn't very crowded for the Heps. Apparently everybody was waiting for the Super Mile.

Penn really ran away with the meet. Harvard looked strong at first when both Ed Dugger and Walter Johnson secured places in the preliminary heats for the final run of the 440 hurdles. Soon afterward, however, Rick Melvoin, who had a pretty bad virus, failed to place in the quarter mile.

And miler Jon Enscoe's fall really hit the Crimson hard. "When Harvard doesn't win the mile," one teammate said, "it's in trouble. When it doesn't place, it's really in trouble."

Most people in the crowd thought the race should have been called back, but the officials disagreed. John Quirk made a strong effort to make up for the loss of Enscoe, but Saturday wasn't a good day for the trackmen.

All things considered, I'd rather be here than Philadelphia.