UAC Elevates Soccer to Major Ranking, Will Review Wrestling, Cross Country

A monopoly of 17 year's standing was broken last night when the Undergraduate Athletic Council voted unanimously to elevate soccer to major status. Only the perfunctory approval of the Faculty Committee on Athletics now separates soccer from becoming the College's eighth major sport.

This is the first time since 1938, when swimming was raised, that a minor sport has been voted major status, and the move paves the way for other minor sports such as cross country and wrestling to joined the elevated ranks. Petitions to this effect from these two sports are now pending before the council and will probably be considered at its next meeting before Christmas.

The Faculty Committee will vote on December 2.

Five Years of Talk

Last night's vote ends over a year of active discussion and five year's of informal talk about the letter status of soccer. It follows in the wake of decisions by other Ivy League schools to equalize nearly all sports, and leaves Cornell as the only college with a soccer team in the league which is not ranked as major.

All 17 of the normal letter winners from this year's team, which earned the best soccer record since 1937, will receive major H's, according to the decision of the 14-man council. The design of the letter will be determined at a later date.

The vote of the group also provides that future freshman soccer players and those on the excellent 1959 team, which lost only one game will henceforth get major numerals like those given to members of the seven other major Yardling sports.

Each Sport Individually

In its over-all consideration of the college's 11 minor sports, the council is taking each sport individually rather than voting on the entire group at once, which has been the procedure at Yale and Princeton in recent years. This could conceivably mean that it will be another 17 years before Harvard has its ninth major sport, but this seems highly unlikely.