NOT in the history of intercollegiate sports has any type of competition made such rapid strides toward popularity as outboard motor boat racing. When the starting gun echoes across the James River at Richmond, Va., next June 27 and 28 in the seventh annual National Intercollegiate Outboard Championships, more than forty universities and preparatory institutions will be represented.

Back in 1930, when the Colgate Outing Club of Colgate University bravely announced its intention to sponsor the first intercollegiate outboard regatta there was a dubious wagging of heads. Veteran outboard drivers throughout the country smiled tolerantly. The college boys, it seemed, were laboring under a hallucination. Wait until they, with oil-besmeared faces, experienced the pounding and physical battering unavoidable in an outboard hydroplane, it was murmured.

But, not only was the regatta, held on Lake Skaneateles, N. Y., highly successful, but pomp and color known only to the campus were added to the event, making an ordinary regatta look dull and drab by comparison. Since that time collegiate drivers have enjoyed the most profound respect in national racing circles, many of them having battled their way to the top in important events outside the realm of college competition.

THE Eastern Intercollegiate Outboard Association, which sponsors the annual national championship, holds only one event annually. This regatta is different from any other in that team competition has been injected, affording added interest. Individual and team championship trophics are awarded on the basis of the number of points scored in the four classes of outboard racing motors---A, B, C and F. First place counts 400 points, second place 300, third 225, etc.

It was in 1933 that Lewis G. Carlisle of East Islip, N. Y., to whom Yale owes credit for many points, won the American high point championship, competing throughout the season against the crack drivers of America. The following year he was succeeded by Joel Thorne who, as a representative of Rutgers University, won the intercollegiate individual championship.

Samuel Crooks, who won the individual intercollegiate title last year under the colors of Rutgers, is ranked as one of the five best drivers in the United States. The time is not far distant, it is believed, when all colleges and universities will award letters in outboard racing. Columbia, Rutgers and Colgate thus far have awarded letters in this sport.