COLLEGE CREWS PREPARING FOR ANNUAL SPRING RACES

With mid-year examinations past, oarsmen in all the eastern universities that support crews have commenced indoor practice in preparation for their spring schedules. Many colleges have announced changes in method.

The University crew, coached this season for the first time by W. Haines, former coach of the Union Boat Club of Boston, with the general supervision of R. F. Herrick '90, is working out a new stroke, the main feature of which is the greater distance that the shoulders are carried back on the pull.

Yale has decided to do away with the English style of rigging with thole-pins instead of oar-locks, an experiment introduced by Coach Nickalls. The Yale squad has acquired two new shells of the American type, together with a new coaching launch which will be ready as soon as outdoor work begins. Indoor training started at New Haven last week.

Cornell has a wealth of first-crew material. There will be seven veterans in the first boat, which lines up as follows: Stroke, Collyer; 7, Fernow; 6, Cushing; 5, Worn; 4, Andrus; 3, Lund; 2, Bird; bow, Morgan. Morgan, the only new man, rowed on the second eight last season.

Columbia has made public no make-up of her crew, but over 100 candidates have started practice under a new system in which every man who keeps in regular training will be given a seat in some crew, perhaps made up by classes or dormitories in the spring. In order to arouse the enthusiasm which was notably lacking at Columbia last year, Coach Rice will make no cut in the squad. With these new conditions as inducements the present squad has reached the largest total in several years.

Penn, has been seriously handicapped, losing four of the men who had been counted on as among the mainstays of the squad. Through deficiency in their work, Garvin, Scott, White, and Hahn are now ineligible. Coach Wright, who has charge of the training this year in place of Vivian Nickalls, had counted on White and Hahn as the best men he had available.

Little is known of the crew situation at Princeton. The University eight will row Princeton on Lake Carnegie for the first time since 1913 on April 20. The first and second crews will arrive four days before the races, which will be rowed on the first day of the Easter recess. In the last race between the two colleges, a triangular contest on the Charles, in which Pennsylvania, Princeton and Harvard took part, Princeton easily won, the University taking second place. The year before in a similar regatta, Cornell was victorious, and the University eight finished ten feet ahead of Princeton. Dr. Spaeth, the Princeton coach, has a problem this year in finding a satisfactory stroke oar.