Potpourri

WITH the tough lessons out of the way, try this for trivia: In track, what are the lengths of the respective legs of the distance medley relay? This event turned out to be the best for the Green runners in the eighth annual Dartmouth Relays, and even if you were there to see Charlie Nadler, Joe Duncan, Jim Cioban and Barry Harwick cover the total distance of 2.5 miles, you'd be hard pressed to remember that it involved half-, quarter-, and three-quarter mile legs for Nadler, Duncan and Cioban before Harwick took off on a 4:09.1 tour of the last mile around Leverone Field House's rust-colored track.

Harwick's anchor effort was impressive but so was Cioban's tear on the third leg. The lithe sophomore ran three-quarters of a mile in 3:01, and the overall time of 9:56.3 lopped 14 seconds off the Dartmouth record and brought the quartet in range (9:53) of the NCAA Meet qualifying standard, an objective that sophomore Ken Jansson achieved in the weight throw with a distance of 59 feet 9 and a half inches.

It has been better than a decade since Navy has had better than a break-even record in Eastern League competition, but Dartmouth's swimmers could have used all of the grads from last year's 9-2 team plus a couple of alligators and it wouldn't have been sufficient to do more than add about six points to the Green side as the Middies swept to a 72-41 win at Annapolis (they did the same thing to defending EISL co-champ Harvard).

That was the opener for Ron Keenhold's squad that figures to be in the middle of the EISL pack this winter. Backstroker Ted Pollard, breaststroker Jerry Kortekamp, and diver John Evans are the best of the proven hands, and two newcomers who will help measurably are sophomore Greg Dozer, a distance freestyler, and freshman Todd Taylor who can produce points in virtually any event.

Pick a name — Peter Dodge, Bryan Wagner, Chris Berggrav, Walter Malmquist, Tim Moerlein, Arne Nielsen, Anne Thomas Donaghy, Debbi Tarinelli. At one point or another during the various stepping stones to the carnival circuit in February, these Dartmouth skiers have been either at or near the top of virtually every event they have entered.

For sheer head-to-head competition, it is hard to beat Berggrav and Malmquist, two of the best jumpers in the nation this winter. Five days after he had increased the Vale de Tempe hill record to 50 meters, Berggrav showed that he is as stylish as he is strong. At Brattleboro, on the 70-meter Harris Hill layout, Malmquist obliterated the hill record with successive jumps of 83 and 81 meters while Berggrav had jumps of 78 and 77.5 meters. Malmquist came a cropper as he touched both hands to the ground on his second landing. The offense cost sufficient points to send Berggrav past him to victory.