Harvard Crews to Shift Seating

As the Harvard heavyweights square off against Princeton and MIT on Lake Carnegie today, and the lights face the Naval Academy on the Charles, it will become evident that neither Crimson squad was wholly complacent with last weekend's victories.

In the language of crew, that means seat changes.

But don't expect to see many new faces in the varsity boats. A more correct description would be 'musical chairs'.

Sophomore Tom Mills, replacing junior Claude Sirlin in the third seat of the heavyweight boat, will be the only new varsity member.

But internally, the varsity boat has undergone a few switches. Veteran two-man Dan Grout will say goodbye to the bow and hello to the stern when he strokes the eight this week. Steve Wayne, who stroked the heavies to last Saturday's narrow victory over Brown, will move to the four seat. Mark Shoeffel jumps from four to two. Neil Oleson in bow, Rich Kennelly at five, Curt Pieckenhagen at six, Andrew Hawley at seven, and coxswain Devin Mahoney remain unchanged.

As for the lightweights, after last week's impressive win over Dartmouth and MIT, the boat remains essentially unchanged--but Coach Charles Butt has done some shuffling of his port side in a search for the fastest possible combination.

"They're just internal changes," Butt said. "We just took a look, it seemed to go well, so we'll try it."

Changing their venues for the lights will be Captain Tripp Switzer, moving from six to two; Larry Meyer, from four to six; and Dave Berger out of two and into the 'engine room' at four.

"Just fine tuning," coxswain Ogan Gurel said.

Gurel, a veteran of last year's varsity campaign, is impressed with how well this year's squad is developing.

"The boat looks fast," he said. "The things we tried to work for over the winter are definitely coming into practice on the water."

The test of the new line-ups for both Crimson squads will be how fast they cover water in this weekend's races. For the heavies, the main competition for the Compton Cup figures to be a Princeton crew that has had some early season difficulties.

The Tigers (2-2) gave the Crimson four tough races last year--including the Compton race, which Harvard copped by two and a half seconds--and were expected to challenge for the national title again this season. But the Princeton Eight got crunched by a strong Penn boat last weekend and dropped a closer contest to Navy in its season opener.

MIT, coached by former Harvard lightweight head Coach Bruce Beall, is expected to be less of a challenge to the heavies.

The lightweights, meanwhile, face Navy for the Haines Cup--a race the Crimson has taken four years running, and 17 of the 19 years the contest has been held. The Mid-shipmen have posted an even 1-1 record thus far, their loss coming to Princeton two weeks ago.

Tough Tigers

The lightweight Tiger eight, the best boat in the country last season and widely expected to be the crew to beat this year, has been vulnerable in the early going. It lost last weekend for the first time since 1984, to an upstart Rutgers crew by one-tenth of a second.

And the man who beat the Tigers in '84?

Harvard's Butt, then in his last season at the helm for Rutgers. Butt will get his shot against the Tigers this year on May 26 at the H-Y-P's.

But for now, it'll be the crew from Annapolis that the Crimson will have to beat down the Charles River. The race is scheduled to begin at 7:45 a.m.