Heavies Whip Navy, Take Adams Cup

Rowing beautifully under quite bad conditions, Harvard's varsity heavyweight crew stroked to a convincing and impressive two length victory yesterday over Navy in the 36th Adams Cup regatta to cap a Crimson sweep on the Severn River.

The sweep will probably ensure all three Crimson boats a first seed in next Saturday's Eastern Sprints at Worcester.

The race was postponed 24 hours from Saturday morning due to high winds and choppy waters and for the first time was without the presence of Pennsylvania, whose crew was forced to fly back to Philadelphia Saturday to partake of some mental exercising.

Penn is in the middle of final exams and coach Ted Nash's squad was given permission to have its Saturday examinations waived until Sunday, so when the Adams Cup race was delayed, the Quakers were forced to hot foot it back to Franklin Library.

Despite the 24 hour delay, yesterday's race was rowed under poor conditions. The varsity race was even after the settle but by the 500 meter mark the Crimson had driven to a half length lead.

Harvard was stroking at a 34 1/2 pace while the Middies were a stroke under at 33 1/2. "At this point I thought we were in excellent shape," Navy coach Carl Ullrich said. "But by 1000 meters they (Harvard) had a full length."

The Crimson kept pulling steadily ahead, adding a half length every 500 meters to its margin of lead. Harvard got its finishing spring up to about 38 or 39 but all the Middies could muster under the sloppy conditions was a 36. Coach Harry Parker's Crimson eight hit the finish in 6:04.0 while Navy limped in at 6:12.6.

"We obviously rowed a poor race," Ullrich said. "Our boys just didn't feel physically tired when they backed to the dock after the race. I blame myself for a lot of the problem. Our bladework was extremely sloppy and some of this was because our boat may have been rigged too low."

"I thought the weather was going to get better so I didn't have the rigging changed for rough water. Hence, we set way too low in the water for the conditions."

In the second varsity race, the Crimson clipped Navy by 10 seconds--6:12.0 to 6:22.0. This victory, along with the Yardlings decisive triumph, gave the heavies a sweep for the day.

In the freshman race, Harvard won by somewhere in between two and three lengths. The exact margin is uncertain as the Navy shell was forced to way-enough about 300 meters from the finish when seven-man Tom Purday caught a crab squarely in the rib cage and was neatly plucked from his seat and deposited in the Severn.

This marked the second time in as many weeks that Purdey has been pryed from his position and plunked in the briney.