No, the person readying to swim the first leg of the 80 yard backstroke relay for North House didn't look like your ordinary Radcliffe girl. The swimsuit didn't quite fit, and the sideburns under the swimming cap were unusual. At any rate, Joan Field was definitely a weird-looking chick.

Then "she" was in the water. After Field had built up a four body-length lead, the Radcliffe swimming coach. Alice McCabe, looked up from the scorer's table, and suddenly wondered how she could have overlooked this superstar in recruiting her team. "Who is that girl? Where did she come from?" queried McCabe to nearby spectators.

After the race was finished and the North House team disqualified, the 70 people who crammed into the tiny area around the pool in the Radcliffe Gym were amazed that John Burris, member of the Crimson swimming team and alias Joan Field, had managed to pass for a girl. McCabe said, "I don't think more than one or two people knew it was a guy until after the race was over."

Burris made the "mistake" of entering the wrong race in Wednesday's tenth annual Radcliffe House Championship Swim Meet. For the first time, Harvard guys living at the Cliffe were allowed to enter certain events in competition with the girls. But the backstroke relay was supposed to be an all-female race.

South House came out victorious for the first time even in the inter-house meet, scoring 60 points to 46 for North House, and 36 for Currier.

Several records were broken in the meet, which Radcliffe sports director Mary Paget termed. "the most exciting we've ever had." RoAnn Costin smashed two marks with times of 19.5 seconds in the 40-yard freestyle and 24.7 in the 40-yard backstroke.

Connie Cervilla set a new record of 52.5 in the 80-yard I. M., and both the butterfly and medley relay standards were bettered.

The Currier House team, in their first year of competition, gave a good effort, but as McCabe said, "They didn't have a chance." Despite the record performances by Costin and Cervilla, North House, which has won the meet seven out of ten times, couldn't overtake South.

Said Burris of the swimming meet, "I couldn't enter the race legitimately since I'm on the swimming team. But I just had to get in it. It was the topping on my swimming season."