The two worlds of college track were in notable conflict this past weekend, and while Harvard was somewhat distant from the middle of the clash it was close enough to feel the reverberations. The Crimson, as a good rule, sticks to the safer sphere of team meets against other colleges, but on several occasions sends individuals into the big world of open meets where it, like anyone else, is in danger of being caught in politics.

The A.A.U. which is easily assigned the villain's role if you're anti-Establishment and against stodgy old men, suspended eight athletes who participated in the Track and Field Federation Meet at Madison Square Garden Friday night. The Federation had refused to apply for A.A.U. sanction of its meet, and the international vested interests have rules prohibiting foreign athletes from participating in open meets unauthorized by a nation's governing track body (which in the U.S. is the A.A.U.).

The whole argument is a confusing mess that Senate investigating committees have been at a loss to unravel. At any rate, the petty officials and the petty coaches go at one another, and just like in the similarly trivial NCAA-Ivy League squabble, the losers are the athletes. The hopelessness of the participants' situations was highlighted by Villanova's superb Irish runners. Ian Hamilton and Frank Murphy. If they competed, they were threatened with losing the eligibility to compete on Irish national teams and in the Olympics. If they didn't run, they would be violating their athletic scholarships and might be unable to stay at Villanova.

No Harvard runner, of course, is dependent on an "athletic scholarship," and so could never be in this exact dilemma. But responsibility to a team can be as binding as money, and if the meet were Harvard-Yale and the squeeze was on Englishman Jim Baker, Crimson coach Bill McCurdy admits that the balancing would be mighty fine. As it is, McCurdy has to judge between the team's versus the individual's interests several times a season when a key runner is lightly injured. Are the potential points worth the risk of greater injury?

Harvard's excellent two-mile relay team is in a position that also reflects the bind. In the Boston K of C Meet that opened the Eastern indoor season, the quartet of Jeff Huvelle, Jim Baker, Dave McKelvey and Trey Burns obliterated the Harvard record by 7 seconds with a 7:33.6 time that stood up for a time as the second best in the country. Fordham, which beat the Crimson on that occasion, lost to Villanova, in two consecutive races while exams sidelined McCurdy's boys. Then over intersession, the four juniors, chaperoned by captain Wayne Anderson, travelled to Philadelphia for the Enquirer Games. There they beat Villanova again, but lost to Manhattan--which had earlier lost to Villanova (Fordham didn't go).

The next race in the series came during the aforementioned Track and Field Federation Meet. There Fordham was second and Villanova, with Ian Hamilton, was third to a surprising Michigan unit. The Harvard runners would have loved to be present, but instead were stuck with mopping up local opposition on Tufts' rinky-dink track.

McCurdy sympathizes with the relay team's desire to run with the nation's best but he will always put the goal of creating a total team above that of acquiring individual excellence. In fact, because Burns hurt his foot at Philadelphia. McCurdy almost regrets that one concession. Anything that hampers Harvard's preparation for the all-important. Big Three Meet this coming Saturday is the worst thing possible. There is never any question of an individual being as important as his team. and this is one of the good aspects of Harvard track, and, in some sense, of Ivy athletics in general. The Crimson runners buy this philosophy completely. But at the same time, they look forward to racing in the hazardous big world against Villanova, Fordham, and Michigan again...after they beat Yale.