Trackmen Expect Success in Spring; Crimson Runners Headed for Jamaica

"This will be a team of spectacular individual strength," Harvard track captain Jeff Huvelle said yesterday, summing up his expectations for the outdoor season. "Our main asset will be our ability to pulverize the opposition in certain events."

After the finest showing ever by a Harvard track squad at the NCAA indoor finals during the weekend, Huvelle and the rest of the Crimson runners will fly to Jamaica to prepare for the outdoor season with six days of intense, twice-a-day running sessions.

Coach Bill McCurdy's team isn't loafing now, however. While the baseball team practices below in Briggs Cage, eager track men train in informal workouts on the balcony boards.

"We can't evaluate just how much our indoor success [Harvard was undefeated in dual meets] reflects our outdoor potential," McCurdy said yesterday. Bill Cobb's absence in the sprints will hurt us, but Bill Jewett and Ralph Hornblower have improved so much recently that we expect a lot of help from them."

In the long jump and the triple jump, Harvard's hopes rest on the performances of three sophomores, John Avault, Joel Hare, and Bob Galliers. All three were sporadically on the injury list during the indoor season.

Harvard doesn't expect to run into any stiff competition until May, when on three consecutive Saturdays it meets Yale, participates in the Heptagonals, and faces Army. Until then, the Crimson will probably be able to concentrate on individual performances, and many are bound to come.

A four-minute mile may be in the offing. Roy Shaw and Jim Baker flirted with the magic barrier on the boards, and should crack it with the added push of Doug Hardin.

Hardin, the little two-mile indoor record-setter, will double with Baker in the mile and two-mile, giving Harvard near-invincible distance strength.

In the quarter-mile, Huvelle and Dave McKelvey will form a pair almost as imposing as Keith Colburn and Trey Burns in the 880. Colburn was the country's top freshman half-miler last year with a 1:48.0, and is now ready for outdoor action after suffering a winter injury.

Harvard's field events men are so good that they won't get to go to Jamaica. McCurdy feels that pole vaulter Steve Schoonover and weightmen Charlie Ajootian, Dick Benka, and Ron Wilson are so close to breaking through to performances of national calibre that he doesn't dare interrupt their schedule.

"After all," Huvelle added, "Ajootian is the second best Armenian 35-pound weight thrower in Rhode Island." Ajootian a Providence native, was fifth in the NCAA's behind RIU's Dick Narcessian.