Four Crews It a Clean Sweep

The world is all right. John Higginson is a genius, the Harvard lightweight crew outstroked MIT and Dartmouth on the Charles Saturday morning, and its path to the Eastern Sprints in May is without obstacles.

Well, maybe.

You see, the lights only edged MIT by two-tenths of a second. That's not very long. In fact, the race was so close that some members of the Harvard boat were unsure they had won. MIT assured them when it shouted across the river, perhaps out of force of habit, "Let's bring the boats together so we can give you our shirts."

Early on, the race looked like an unexpectedly easy victory for a Crimson crew that came in uncertain that they would win. In a light breeze and bright sunlight, Harvard came the start even, then gradually pulled away from MIT. By 500 meters the Crimson had two seats on MIT and six on a Dartmouth squad that had been desperately practicing this week on the only 500 unfrozen meters of the Connecticut River near Hanover.

By the time Harvard pushed out to a length on MIT with a power ten in front of the latter's boat-house, about 600 meters from the finish, the race looked over. It wasn't.

Born Again

Pushing their cadence up to 37, MIT--which vanquished Yale on April 15--began to gnaw quickly into the Crimson lead. Six seats, four seats, two seats--the lead dwindled as MIT continued its powerful spring. The Crimson could not respond.

The finish line came about five strokes before MIT would have passed the Crimson, and the Harvard lightweights had won their first race of the season--by a fraction of a seat.

The J.V.s had an easier time of it, thrashing MIT by 18 seconds and Dartmouth by 20 with a time of 6:23--11.2 seconds slower than the varsity in considerably worse conditions and without being pressed.

John Higginson said yesterday the race Saturday had encouraged him. The varsity "raced well except for the legitimate reasons," he said, adding, "No comparison can be made between the varsity and J.V. times."

I would have given my eye-teeth to have the J.V. row in the same race as the varsity," Higginson added.

Higginson said the next week of practice would include "continual changing throughout the week. There are no anchors in the group of 16 but there are people who are a little bit better--we'll not yet ready to throw his hands in the air and match the varsity J.V. in a 2000-meter race to determine the first boat for the rest of the year.

Next weekend the lights face Navy on the Charles in what should be another tough race. Princeton has beaten Navy but the Tigers have also outstroked Rutgers, which set back Harvard by 6.6 seconds last weekend.

Higginson said all the boats "are kind of close together. There are three of four boats faster than us now, but there were last year at this time, too."

And last year, by the time the season ended, it was Harvard that won the Eastern Sprints.