Tom Bolles is essentially a crew coach. Though he now directs the fortunes of the whole College athletic program from a little office in the basement of the Union, he still loves any chance to table his official duties for a moment and "just talk crew."

Last week he had a perfect opportunity--the traditional dinner honoring the crew that beat Yale last spring. But the 1952 crew banquet had much more to it than just feting a winning eight. It was a tribute to Bolles himself, who retired last spring after climaxing 16 years as coach with the victory at New London. His remarkable record while at Cambridge shows victories over 173 crews in 77 races, with losses to only 23 opposing boats. The dinner was really for him.

And Bolles took this opportunity to reminisce. He named the races which for some special reasons stood out in his memory.

The first, quite naturally, was his varsity debut in the spring of 1937. "This was one of my most crucial races," he said, "because I had a selling job to do. I took over when there were five returning seniors on the crew, plus Spike Chace, a junior, who had stroked the previous year. Chace had terrific power, but had lost every race but the Yale race the year before. And the reason was that the crew rowed the traditional high stroke. My job was to convince Chace and the seniors that a low stroke was the best. As a green coach with a new style I had everything to loss. Supposing the new low stroke didn't work?"

It did. Chase dropped to a 32 after the first minute and a half, and Princeton took the lead, but the Crimson overtook the Tigers and won--the first Compton Cup victory for Harvard, and proof that Bolles' new system was best.

That same year against Navy in Philadelphia Bolles made a compromise. Over a short course he planned on dropping to a 34 for the middle of the race, but Chace could never get the stroke below 36, and the Crimson lost. "That race cured me of the high stroke completely," Bolles said. "Never again."

The next year Chace captained the '38 crew to an undefeated season, and led the Crimson to a clean sweep of the freshman, combination, J.V., and varsity races at New London--another big day for Bolles. It was his first sweep and first undefeated season.

"I'll never forget the Henley Regatta of '39," Bolles continued. "Robert F. Herrick '00 went with us, and we won all three races and the Grand Challenge Cup. It was a great thrill to be with Herrick, the coach of the first winning Harvard crew."

Darcy Curwen stroked his freshman crew, and the varsity his sophomore and junior years before entering the service; he never lost a race. Bolles mentioned the Curwen crew that beat Cornell in 1941. "That win was particularly sweet because we each had won twice before--this one was the rubber race."

In 1947 the high-low stroke controversy came up again. Skip Walz had won the '46 EARC race at Wisconsin with his high stroking unit, while Harvard had finished ninth. Although most of the U.S. crews had by now adopted the low stroke, the high stroke advocate Walz went to coach Yale and in his first year pulled a number of unexpected upsets. Then he came up against Harvard in the EARC 2000-metre first heats at Princeton.

"Here again was the irreconcilable conflict," Bolles said. "My mind went back to the '37 Navy race, but I wouldn't stampede." The Crimson crew never rowed over a 32, and won by a length without a sprint. Again Bolles had proven the supremacy of the low-stroke style.

Also in '46 Bolles took his crew to Seattle (his home town) and set a 2000-metre world record that still stands (5:49). In '49 the three Harvard crews won six races in one day against 30 crews at Syracuse, an unequalled record. But Bolles said he had never had a crew that had rowed as hard as the '48 boat--five races in eight days. Frank Strong--a great oarsman--lost 20 pounds, but the Crimson still lost the Olympic tryouts because it was so tired.

He mentioned the Henley victories of two years ago, but Bolles said last June 22 was his biggest day. "The McCagg crew rowed as nearly a perfect race as human beings can," he said. It holds a very special place in my memory." And well it night. It was his last crew, and one of his best.