It's good to see the recent return to normalcy. Damn good. Things were all messed up, and there seemed to be no direction to what was happening. But then Elvis returned to the charts. After that, the Sox and Senators started winning. And now, after unheard of success by Penn teams in competition with Harvard, coach Harry Parker sent his heavyweight crew out to right matters. Equality can be a good thing, but when Harvard starts losing to the Quakers in all manner of sports, I think things have gone a bit too far.

The education at Penn is pretty good, and no one would deny that there were a few smart people there. But in the past, their, their teams were losing ones, at least when Harvard was the opponent. Only in basketball did the Quakers hold an edge, and they had never beaten a Harvard squad in squash, cross country, or hockey. It was tradition to lose to the Crimson, and a damn good one at that.

But some people have no respect for tradition, and the rejuvenated athletic department at Penn seems to contain a few such individuals. Going to the University of Pennsylvania for the athletic program used to be like going to Wool-worth's to buy a suit. But some of the more ambitious persons connected with Penn went out to rustle up some jocks, and the shortest of chats with some of the Quaker's heavyweight oarsmen, last Saturday at Worcester makes it quite clear that they came up with a pretty rare and rugged species. After a while, even the most docile get tired of losing, and take steps to reverse the trend. Ask Dick Nixon.

So a whole new menagerie has evolved at Penn, though the evolution was compressed into about five years. And this year, the Crimson did no better than break even with the Quakers. Most of the Penn victories were tragic, even humiliating.

First, Penn whipped the fencing team, 19-8. Harvard is not a fencing power, but neither is Penn, and the score was very unacceptable. Coach Edo Marion just shook his head. "It was very disappointing and unexpected," he said. "Even the Penn coach came up to me afterwards and said he couldn't believe the score was so lopsided," Marion added. It was the first time that season that Harvard had lost all three weapons.

On the very same day, the Quakers were beating Harvard's racquetmen for the first time ever after losing to the Crimson 25 times. Coach Jack Barnaby's squad had won 7 consecutive Ivy titles, 24 straight team matches, and 60 of 63 individual matches that winter before losing to the Quakers and their strange balls, 5-4. The loss gave Penn the league championship ahead of the Crimson. You could almost hear Dickie Lee saying, "Strange things happen in this world." Barnaby said that seeing Penn so happy almost took he sting out of the defeat. Coaches have compassion.

Harvard lost another Ivy crown when the Quaker wrestlers squeaked out a 17-14 win a week later. As a result, Penn took first place in the wrestling standings, too.

Things got even worse this spring. Harvard was rated a co-favorite in the Eastern Baseball League, and Penn was hoping to move up from last year's seventh place finish in the ten-team circuit. But the Red and Blue had little trouble dumping Harvard, 6-3, to open the season in style. Harvard's lacrosse team was equally successful. Penn trailed until the very end of the game, but then tied the score with a rally. The Quakers scored four goals in five minutes of overtime to win, 14-10. The Crimson had snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.

The tennis squad tried next. On Penn's distinctive hard-surface courts, the Crimson bowed, 5-4, for its only loss of the season. Poor old coach Barnaby. Only a rout of Penn by Princeton and a Harvard win over the Tigers averted a total tragedy. Harry Parker's crew had worse lunch when it tried to retain the Adams Cup for the sixth year in a row. Penn eased to a 1 1/2 length victory, and it seemed that the world might come to an end after all.

People talked about dynasties, how one had crumbled and another had taken its place. But they said the same thing after the Mets beat the Yankees a few years ago in the Mayor's Trophy Game. And didn't the Yankees win the World Series, and didn't the Mets establish themselves in the league cellar? Parker went to Penn in the old days, and he knew that the whole situation just wasn't right, so he sent his crew out Saturday to restore a little sanity to the athletic picture.

Restore sanity his boys did, and the lightweights made it really sting as they ran away from the supposedly strong Penn boats. Heavyweight cox Tom Tiffany, who was journalistically raped by the New York Times after the Adams Cup loss to Penn when they claimed his steering was a major factor in the loss, guided the boat to a resounding 1 1/2 length triumph over the Quakers at Worcester. It was good to get another Penn shirt.

It must have brought tears of joy to Nate Pusey's eyes.