With only a month to go in the race for the Straus Trophy, Kirkland House is leading second-place Winthrop by over 50 points, and should gain its fifth consecutive House athletic championship.

If the Deacons turn in their usual spring performance, Winthrop, which has never won the Straus Trophy, will never stand a chance: In the past four spring seasons, Kirkland has come from behind in the point totals to win the championship. This year, Deacon athletes have won only one title, in volley ball, but have capitalized on consistently high finishes in every other sport.

Winthrop trails Kirkland despite first place finishes in touch football, cross country, basketball, and hockey. And a surprisingly strong showing by Adams House, up from a hopeless eighth-place finish last year, even knock the Puritans into third. Only 40 points behind Winthrop, Adams has already scored almost 400 more points than it had last year at this time.

It will be a fight among all of the other Houses for the fourth spot. Dunster is currently in fourth place with 786 points, but a slim margin 14 is all that separates the Funsters from Leverett. Caught in the second division are Lowell (715), Eliot (642) and Dudley (348). Dudley has won the boxing championship, but little else. Specially disappointing is Eliot's slip from a first place in the fall to present seventh place cranny.

"We're like the legendary girl with the curl," John H. Finley, Jr., '25, of Eliot House, explained. "When we are good, we are very, very good, but when we are bad, we are awful."

One bright sport in the Eliot spring picture and probably the only sure in the spring season is the Eliot House crew, which last summer the quarter-finals of the Henley Regatta. "We beat the champions Northern Ireland--whatever that means," Finley remarked. The Eliot will have the advantage of rowing in a new shell, rather than one the 15-year-old hand-me-downs from the varsity used by the other uses.

One athletic Secretary who speaks with more authority than most is H. Coffin IV, '61 of Kirkland. "There is no question that the wants that Trophy again," Coffin stated recently. "If we're not -confident, we'll win." He pointed to Krikland's past tennis team and team shored up by experienced pitching and sophomore talent. Don't count us out yet," Winthrop's Athletic Secretary Arnold '61 declared. "If Winthrop can mobilize all of its forces, can pick up a lot of ground and catch Kirkland." Margoluis was optimistic about the Puritan golf team--a sport in which Houses have trouble fielding a squad.

spring could easily see a down-to-the-wire three-team scramble Straus Trophy, and it is possible that by May 19, when the meet closes the season, the current standings will be completely . But the Deacons look good, and it is doubtful that they will