CREW

Dartmouth's heavyweight oarsmen have been making steady progress under coach Pete Gardner for the past few years and the fruits of the labor have begun to show.

The Big Green wrapped up the sprint season on the Connecticut River on May 17 by outracing Syracuse, M.I.T., and a torrential thunderstorm to gain their first victory in the Packard Cup series. Dartmouth's victory by more than two lengths was a convincing finale to prepare the Green for the Intercollegiate Rowing Association championship at Syracuse in mid-June.

The Packard Cup was Dartmouth's second cup success of the season. Rutgers and Boston University fell victims to the Green surge in late April on the Raritan River in New Jersey, and only a magnificent drive in the final 500 meters turned the tide for Wisconsin as the Badgers overtook Dartmouth to capture the Cochrane Cup on the Connecticut. Dartmouth and Wisconsin had battled evenly through the first half of that race before the Indians took a slight lead. The combination of a slight advantage from the wind and current plus its closing drive proved to be Wisconsin's trump, however.

The Eastern Sprint Championships at Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Mass., also turned out to be a banner day for the Indians. Dartmouth's fate was the toughest trial heat pairing of the day which sent the Indians against Penn and Cornell, two of the East's best eights. The order of finish in the trial was Penn-Cornell-Dartmouth-Rutgers-Syracuse. The first two crews advanced to the final and Dartmouth moved on to the reserve championship and collected that crown by defeating Yale, Navy, Rutgers, Brown and Columbia.

It was the Indians' finest finish at the Sprints and as Gardner noted, "There's a much nicer feeling in winning a race than in settling for fourth, fifth, or sixth." This would have been Dartmouth's fate had they made the final.