It was chilly and dark out on the freshman track as the runners finished up their workout. Coach Bill McCurdy put his hands in his pockets and walked here and there to keep warm while Ed Martin went through some prancing exercises and Jed Fitzgerald ran fast laps to loosen up his shoulders. Cross-country is over and winter track has begun.

"Our whole cross-country season was geared toward one meet and we lost that one," McCurdy said, referring to Yale's 27-28 victory, "so I don't know what to say. It was a whale of a competitive effort, but we didn't quite pull it off."

Basically, McCurdy's and the team's effort was to support its three of four consistent runners with the depth necessary to win meets. Benjamin and Thompson were two seniors of whom McCurdy could expect a reliable performance, and the season more than established their worth.

Jed Fitzgerald adequately filled the perennially awkward spot of a freshman star establishing himself on a varsity squad. Hampered by colds, Fitzgerald had good days and bad days throughout the season. There is no question, however, that he will be one of McCurdy's key men next year.

But with these three men healthy and running, McCurdy still had his problems. Ed Martin, who hasn't had a really outstanding season since his freshman year, was lamed by a sore tendon all fall, while Jim Schlaeppi was simply in poor condition most of the season.

McCurdy ran his own melodramatic race against Yale in an attempt to groom these two runners in time for the meet. Although the Crimson lost by a point, he succeeded in squeezing the maximum possible effort from his team.

All five were "run out," both physically and emotionally, as was seen in the Heptagonals the following week. With the exception of Benjamin, each of the five exhausted heroes of the Yale meet had an off day at Van Corlandt Park, when the team finished fifth.

McCurdy is also proud of the team's effort against Cornell. Both squads had not yet reached top form for the season, and the meet could have gone either way. Harvard won this meet and all the others except for Yale.

With Benjamin, Schlaeppi, Thompson, and Brown graduating this spring, McCurdy naturally turns an expectant eye toward the freshmen. Mark Mullin will fill Jed Fitzgerald's sophomore shoes, figuratively speaking, and Bob Knapp and Dick Slansky should provide some much needed depth to the varsity next year.

At the same time, other Ivy League schools have fielded the strongest freshman teams McCurdy has ever seen. "Cornell's freshmen were just unbelievable," he says, and the Big Red's IC4A Freshman championship would confirm his statement. Dartmouth had two standouts one of whom ran Mark Mullin off his feet.

Thus, even if Martin gets healthy, Fitzgerald gets consistent, Mullin meets expectations, and depth holds out, it will be rough going for cross-country next year. The season will be tough, but McCurdy has a reputation for making his squads even tougher.