Track: Trying for Another GBC Title

Track season never dies, it just goes on, and on, and on...While other sports confine their activities to specific seasons, Coach Edgar Stowell's boys have been at it for seven straight months, with no end in sight.

If this continuity extends to performance, then the highly touted spring version of the thinclads, can expect to win all their dual encounters and successfully defend their Greater Boston Title.

Except for a few new faces in the javelin competition, the squad expects to go with most of the old workhorses. Once again the fieldmen will be looking to pick up a slew of points. ICCA and all Ivy selections Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace and Mel Embree will be up to their old jumping tricks, taking the Ivies by storm. Opposing coaches will have their hands filled trying to figure out where Vanderpool-Wallace will strike next this spring. Stowell expects the durable Bahaman to fill in at long jump triple jump, and sprint medley, with an occasional high jump stint thrown in.

Leon Sharpe and Ahmed Kayali will team up with Vanderpool-Wallace in the triple jump and Bill Wendell joins VPW and Sharpe in the long jump pits.

Both Vanderpool-Wallace and Mel Embree will be hard-pressed to duplicate their strong finishings at the IC4As March 2. At that meet Embree leaped to a third place in the high jump and Vanderpool-Wallace notched second in the long jump. The two top Harvard competitors are in excellent position to write themselves into spring track record annuals. Embree is just an inch shy of the 7 ft. mark, and Vanderpool-Wallace will have to fly eight inches longer to break a longstanding Harvard mark of 25 ft. 3 in. in the long jump.

A few inches below Embree in the high jump for Harvard will be John McCollogh and Kevin Barnes, both capable of jumping in the 6 ft. altitudes.

An equally strong contingent featuring Steve Niemi, Dan Jiggets, and Chris Queen, will make the change from the weight throw to the hammer and discuss. Adrian Tew, a returning all-Ivy javelin thrower, will have to capture a few first places to balance the lack of depth in that event.

Blayne Hemkel will share pole vaulting duties with Don Berg and Steve Hanes. The vaulting corps, lacking a good 16 footer, will not be placing first very many times this season.

Coach Pappy Hunt's runners, a much improved lot since the opening of the indoor season, will show strength in the quarter and half mile. "Middle distance men Bill Okerman, Steve Brown, and Dave Rowe, made a great deal of progress under Pappy," Stowel said earlier this week.

Few Ivy League teams will be able to match a healthy Harvard quarter mile line-up. When Nick Leone and Joel Peter aren't nursing injuries, they have a one-two punch in the low 50-second range that could be tops in the 440 circuit.

Brown has shown his strength as a stalwart in the half mile. Stowell hinted that there would be some juggling in the middle distance lineup so it's a cinch that the speedy New York freshman will be able to flash some of that explosive sub-50 quarter mile strength.

The Crimson could be weak in both the short and long distance races. Senior Ric Rojas will combine with Jeff Campbell, Dirk Skinner, Jim Keefe, Fred Linsk and Bill Muller to form what should be an effective long distance corps. But Campbell may also see action in the half-mile if necessary, Stowell said last week.

In the dashes and in the sprint relay, Alan Yates and Alan Boyer should receive some help from VPW as well as from football holdover Alky Tsitsos.

Sam Butler will perform most of the hurdling chores running in both the intermediates and high hurdles. A supporting cast, Randy Buckley and John Maggio in the intermediate hurdles, could add depth to Butler's one man crusade.

The thinclads will receive their first test April 3 during a training excursion to Baptist College (S.C.). Baptist has a 9.6, 9.7 and a 9.9 second 100 yd. dash contingent, as well as three sub-50 second quarter milers so the Crimson won't be in for a joy ride. Owing to the late opening of the Harvard track season, the Crimson will definitely be at the disadvantage. "Baptist will be in about the middle of the season and we won't be in their kind of shape," Hunt said last week. "We could take our lumps in some of the running events--We'll be out classed this soon."

After the Baptist College contest, the Crimson will run in the South Carolina Relays.

The Boston College relays April 19-20 follow the southern relays, but then the Crimson will run up with an onslaught of dual meet competition. After the Princeton meet (April 15), the Crimson faces Yale (April 23), Dartmouth (April 30), and Army at a date to be announced later. Interspersed between the three head-on meets, will be the April 26 Penn Relay Carnival, and the Greater Boston Relays in early May. "Once we get into that part of the season we won't be able to practice," Stowell said. "We'll just have to condition by competition."

Without the Bubble, the Crimson will have to hope for a few breaks in the weather to remain on par with the rest of the league. "It's not an excuse and we will do okay anyway," Stowell said. "But when its 32 degrees and snowing outside, I might change my opinion."