When ten crimson-shirted harriers pound along the shores of Lake Carnegie and back across the Polo Field at Princeton this Friday in their objective meets with the Elis and the Tigers, they should be concluding the best Harvard dual meet season in several years; for the team this fall is one worthy of the coaching of Jaako Mikkola, who has been turning out great distance runners for so long it seems forever.

And they should win at Princeton; even Mikkola is pretty confident--"if they'll all just click," he says. Yale and Princeton are good, for the Elis have been winning consistently, and the Tigers, while losing to the strong Army and Navy teams, are a potentially powerful group. But Harvard is different. On paper, from last year's records, the Crimson should be weak. Their undefeated record shows how Jaako has built that team.

Perhaps the most interesting "case" on the team is that of Dave Simboli, a Junior who is running for his first year along the Charles. Last spring, about two weeks before the Yale meet, Simboli took his first visible interest in Harvard track when he turned up and started running. He was nursed along then, did a little work during the summer, and now he is a mainstay among the "first five" of the harriers, as his third in the Holy Cross meet last Friday will show.

Last of the Braytons

The captain--and he is "a wonderful captain," in Jaako's estimation--is a Brayton, and in Harvard running of recent years there is no better name. Last year there was Sherman, with his 50 second quarters, and Dick and his good half-miles. Roswell is the last of the line, and Jaako says he is typical of his family, "for they're all great fightters and great workers, and all have built themselves into good runners."

Penn Tuttle, who comes next down the line, made his bid for fame in the Boston University race, where he decided to emulate the feat of Alec Northrup, and run with only one shoe. When Northrup lost his shoe in last year's New England Relays, he turned in a 4:17 mile; and Tuttle did almost equally well as he ran beautifully to take first place--despite the fact that over the last three miles of the course he had one shoe on and one shoe off. Mikkola has only one thing to add about him--"if he could only spend a little less time on labs," he says wistfully.

More Juniors

A few too many stitches have been bothering Gene Clark, who now ranks as Harvard's best miler. Cross Country will help his mile running, and he should come through down at Princeton Friday. Of all the members of the team, his nice form and easy running are perhaps the pleasantest to watch. Eddie Childs and Cliff Stevens are both half-milers, and like Clark, Simboli and Tuttle are Juniors. They will be on the team of ten heading for Tigertown, as will their classmate Dick Wing, who, like Simboli, has never run before, but who followed his roommate Gene Clark down to the river.

Three Sophomores complete the team led by Bob Nichols, last year's Freshman captain. Although out of the triangular race, he's been in the scoring in most of the meets, and observers like his nice, easy running. Charlie Oldfather has been coming better after a slow start, while Joseph McLoughlin, who had hardly run at all before he came to Harvard, is much improved over last year. He was 14th in the Yale-Princeton meet last fall, but now he's one of the three members of his class on the team.