When the freshman cross-country team overcame inexperience, injuries, and six Boston-area schools to win first place in the Greater Boston Intercollegiate meet Nov. 6, they surprised everyone but coach Bill McCurdy.

Said McCurdy, "They're an aggressive team. When the chips are down, they're in there scrapping." The freshman harriers showed their aggressiveness in virtually every meet this season, and three stars and five victories emerged in the process.

The three--Jim-Smith, Neil Houston, and Dave Rice--led the Crimson in every race of the year, including the upset of Boston College in the G.B.I. Smith paced his roommates in all seven races of the season, winning three and placing second in another pair. He turned in his most spectacular performance in the 19-36 Dartmouth rout, jogging over the course faster than any other Harvard freshman on record.

Rice and Houston, if less dazzling in their records, were no less consistent. Rice's second-place effort against Dartmouth was his fourth successive finish as number-two man for the Crimson. Houston bettered Rice in the other races, and outdid himself in placing fifth in the Big Three meet, less than 20 seconds behind second-place Smith.

The 19-42 victory over Yale in the Big Three contest was the surprising climax to a 4-4 season that began disastrously with a 43-16 defeat at the hands of Providence. Then, after edging B.U., 27-32, the Crimson lost to Brown and Cornell in a three-way clash.

Hurt by Injuries

In the first half of the season, injuries benched two promising harriers, Doug Raymond and Woody Smith, while inexperience plagued the rest of the team. While they had all raced before, none of the freshman runners had had any substantial cross-country experience. By mid-season, however, they had enough experience to trounce Columbia, 20-41, and to push a strong Penn team before losing, 29-27. From then on, the Crimson gathered momentum. They faltered before Princeton, but ran up victories over Dartmouth, Yale, and the G.B.L. contenders.

While coaches are not normally very satisfied with 4-4 records, McCurdy is very happy, and not without reason. Next year he will have the "problem" of fitting three dependable harriers into his varsity squad--and he'll have some depth. Chuck Redman, Ed Laws and George Schrader were all showing marked improvement by the end of the season, while Bob Mitchell's last mile in the G.B.I. was nothing short of phenomenal.

"Anyway, we beat Yale," says McCurdy. "What more can you ask from a season?"