Crimson Football Coach's Golf Trip Explains Absence

Things are getting pretty tough when a man can't even play a few days of golf without putting the entire Northeast in a furor. At least that's the way it must seem to Harvard football coach John Yovicsin, who just started off his Harvard coaching career with a bang by pulling a disappearing act for three days.

Police in Pennsylvania proclaimed the Crimson coach a missing person yesterday, but early this morning the missing person found himself. Yovicsin picked up a paper, saw his name in headlines, and ran to the nearest phone to inform the world that Harvard would, after all, have a head coach come September 1.

This came as no surprise to the Harvard Athletic Department, which has weathered more serious storms.

As Donald M. Felt, assistant director of athletics, put it, "We weren't particularly concerned about him. We certainly hadn't considered the possibility of his not being here to open practice on September 1."

As is often the case, it was Yovicsin's wife who started worrying first, and with good reason. Her husband had informed her that he would be stopping on the way back from Harvard for a few day's golfing. En route to Cambridge, Yovicsin exerted the football coach's privilege of changing his mind and decided to switch his schedule around, golfing before going to Cambridge.

When Mrs. Yovicsin didn't hear from him, she called Harvard and then alerted the police; and the hunt was on, only to end quite unspectacularly when Yovicsin called back to civilization from his golfing retreat in Allentown, Pa.