Harriers Meet Penn and Columbia; Expect Uphill Fight Against Quakers

The Harvard cross country team travels to New York City to run against Columbia and Pennsylvania today at Van Cortlandt Park. The meet represents the biggest test the Crimson has faced to date.

"It's the purity of Harvard versus the proseletyzing of Penn," said coach Bill McCurdy yesterday. "Columbia will be an interested spectator."

McCurdy was referring to Penn's militant, controversial, and successful recruiting policies. "Penn's Ivy brow raising policies have crash programmed them into usurping our accustomed cross country dominance in the League," McCurdy continued.

Controversial or not, Penn's practices have done what they were designed to do: the Quakers were second in the East, and third in the nation last year. They bombed Harvard at both the varsity and frosh levels last year.

This year may be a different story, although Penn still must be rated the favorite. Missing from last year's squad are stars Karl Thornton and Julio Piazza--both graduated--and Dave Merrick, who transfered to Michigan State.

Back, however, are Bob Childs, Dennis Fikes and Frank O'Connor, all top performers. Backing them up are Dave McKee, Kent Staver and sophomore Paul Barbary.

Deep

What Penn appears to have--and Harvard appears to lack--is depth. On September 30, Penn blasted Lehigh and L. Salle, 19-43 and 17-46. The top six runners for the Quakers ran within 57 seconds of each other.

In the Providence-UMass meet, Harvard's top four--Ric Rojas, John Quirk, Marsh Jones and Andy Campbell--were all within 38 seconds. But fifth place finisher Jimmy Keefe was a full 1:06 off the pace.

The gap is not so great that Harvard is out of the running. But if the race comes down to the last man--and past performance indicates it will-Keefe, Bob Reason or Jimmy Hughes will have to hustle.

The Crimson appears to be in good shape for the meet. Marsh Jones came down with a sore throat on Wednesday and was ordered to stop practicing, but he appears ready to run. Fred Linsk is suffering a viral infection, and won't be able to compete.

Penn, which already bombed Columbia once, has the advantage of experience on the tricky five mile long Van Cortlandt Park course, where the second mile on the treacherous hill path often decides a meet.