Rowing

Faced for the first time with the challenge of a "major league" schedule, the Dartmouth Rowing Club got its oarsmen away to a fast start in February with a daily training schedule that called for a five or six-mile outdoor run and then 45 minutes of indoor calisthenics at the gym.

By March 1, with the ice on the Connecticut River a foot thick under the Ledyard Bridge, the crew took to open water below the Wilder Dam. But not in the fragile, sleek eight-oared shells. Instead they propelled their new sixteen-oared Jim Smith training barge through the snow and sleet-filled afternoons of early March.

More than 100 stalwarts are at work under varsity coach Thad Seymour and freshman coach Phil Cole, but the club still had to use the pages of The Dartmouth to advertise for a coxswain, preferably one who didn't mind rough water or even rougher weather.

The crews should find easier going during spring vacation when the heavyweights visit the Kent School in Connecticut and the lightweights journey to Annapolis for a final polish before moving into formal competition.