Crimson crew supporters can face the coming season with confidence, for working out of Newell Boat House at the present time are the makings of what should be another superlative Harvard eight.

With the stern four of last June's boat intact and enough good material remaining from the 1941 Jayvees and Combos to guarantee high caliber oarsmen for the four vacant bow positions, there are plenty of indications that the 1942 eight will be a top-notch successer to last year's, the best crew Tom Bolles ever coached at Harvard.

But behind the dozen experienced oarsmen available to the scholarly mentor from previous campaigns, there appears a distinct drop in quality, and, besides worrying about the present Varsity, Bolles will have to build for 1943, since most of this year's Juniors are rowing for the last time, what with the war and accelerated programs.

Captain Ted Lyman and Hallett Whitman, five and six in the Varsity boiler room, are expected to hold the same positions this year, and the odds are that seven-man Dave Challinor will be rowing behind stroke Bus Curwen for the third straight spring. In addition Tommy Boynton, last year's coxswain, is again on hand.

Curwen Has No Peer

Bolles has all he could ask for in Curwen as a stroke. Bus stood head and shoulders above last year's fine array of pace-setters, and now he is expected to have the field all to himself. Just at present he is churning up the chlorinated waters of the swimming pool, but after this weekend he will enter the rowing scene, probably with a good deal of pain, since a winter's work swimming leaves hands in no condition for hard pulling on a sweep.

Below Curwen there is practically nothing. In his absence Dave Noyes is stroking the Varsity, with experience limited to two falls of rowing, one of which was on the starboard side. An operation laid him up all last spring, and even this fall he was not a stroke. Bryce Seligman and George Nichols are the other two ranking men, and both were stroking House crews last spring. All this is a far cry from working on the Jayvees, which one of the three will probably be called upon to do.

Mike Marshall and Jerry Prince have been rowing three and four on the Varsity pretty steadily, although Bolles swears up and down that his boatings at present are meaningless. Usually "Sledge" Fitz at bow and Johnny Erskine at two have been the other members of the big boat, but yesterday Pop Jenks and Johnny Richardson filled in.

About half a dozen Sophomores have shown signs of promise in addition to Noyes. Jim Donald's rise has been spectacular. Coming to Harvard from Dallas, Texas, he never saw a sweep until Freshman year. Now that the power of which he has always had plenty has been blended with smoothness, it looks as if he might go places which his position on the second Freshman eight did not indicate.

Dick Ober, Schofield Andrews, Bill Sohier, Winsor Soule, and Nick Biddle, all 1944 are working out on the Jayvees at times, and together with veterans Tony Villa, Ev Brown, and Ford King, will probably comprise a large part of the Junior Varsity.