It is rare that a good college team will keep the same stars for two consecutive seasons, with graduation providing an ever-present physical limit to a player's eligibility. This year's varsity swimmng team, however, will have ten returning lettermen and will lose no one who led last year's squad to a sixth place finish in the NCAA championships.

The big four, Bill Murray in the backstroke, Jim Stanley in the orthodox breaststroke, captain John Hammond in the butterfly, and Dick Seaton in the freestyle, comprise the group that gave the Crimson 400-yard medley relay team first place in the Easterns and fourth in the Nationals last spring. They are all back, and presumably improved with increased experience.

Hammond won All-America honors and finished runner-up to the phenomenal Michigan star, Tony Tashnik, in the 100-yard butterfly at the NCAA's. Stanley won the Eastern's in the 100-yard breast and finished second in the Nationals.

From last year's relatively strong freshman team comes Bruce Hunter to swim the freestyle sprints, Fred Cooley, Dave Seaton, and Bob Komenda to handle the longer distances, and Bill Shelstede, an all-round man who can swim any one of four different strokes.

Isolating these facts, it would seem the Crimson has a fine nucleus of swimmers from former years with all its stars still competing and a reasonably good group of sophomores coming up.

The varsity, however, will have a definite struggle even to retain its share in last years' three way tie for second place with Army and Dartmouth. Though the varsity keeps its status quo, and most likely is a better team than last year, the rest of the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming league (the eight Ivy schools plus Army and Navy) has improved more than the Crimson.

Army, Navy, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Cornell have all improved over last year and will be much harder to beat. "These teams will be as closely knit as any season in the past," Assistant Coach Bill Brooks said, adding that each varsity meet is likely to be extremely close, going down to the last relay.

The foregoing has not even considered Yale, which is likely to have one of its greatest seasons. The Elis for outstrip any other team in the league; they have Tim Jecko, who swims everything well, Roger Anderson, a freestyler who can do any length from 100 to 440, Joe Koletsky, Jerry Dolby, and a promising new group of sophomores. Yale will have no problem winning the league; the fight for second place will be extremely tight, to say the least.

The Crimson also has internal problems. Thirty-year veteran coach Hal Ulen has not yet recovered from a summer bursitis operation, but Coach Brooks says that according to the present forecast Ulen "is expected back sometime this season." Until then, the team will be coached by Brooks, the freshman coach and Ulen's assistant for the past 14 years.

For a combination of reasons, mainly the strength of the league, it would be unjust to blithely predict that the Crimson will breeze to another second place in their perennial position behind Yale. The prospects portend a tough, but hopeful, season in the I.A.B.