Heavyweights

THREE members of the Dartmouth track and field team are without equal when it comes to heaving a 35-pound brass ball attached to a metal triangle more than 20 yards. Ed Kania and Ken Jansson, both juniors, and Sean O'Keefe, a sophomore, have all thrown the weight, indoor track's answer to the hammer throw, over 60 feet. "We'll be the only school with three weight-throwers in the NCAA championships," says head track coach Ken Weinbel. "It's probably the strongest threesome from one school in history. No one can remember one school having three kids that powerful."

Kania, a six-foot five-inch, 255 pounder, threw the weight 64 feet 9 inches to become the first Ivy League undergraduate in more than 20 years to win a national Amateur Athletic Union indoor track and field championship. His feat occurred in the AAU weight competition at Princeton, in late February. The next day, Kania threw the weight 62 feet 11¼ inches to win his first Heptagonal title. His throw was four inches better than the heave of classmate-teammate Jansson, the defending Heptagonal champion.

"It was really difficult competing two days in a row," observes Kania, whose mid-January toss of 67 feet 1 inch at the Dartmouth Relays is best in the country this year. "I was really up for the Nationals, and I found it hard throwing at Ithaca. I was hoping for a better one." Not long afterward, he won the IC4A cham- pionship, too.

O'Keefe joined his all-America teammates in the 60-foot club in a meet against Army. His 60-foot 1½-inch throw qualified him for the NCAA Championships at Detroit. This is the second Dartmouth team to have three men over the 60-foot cut-off mark for NCAA competition. DeWitt Davies, George Remmer, and William Dinneen did it for the Big Green back on the 1970 team.

Weinbel credits his assistant coach, Carl Wallen, for the weight-throwers' success. "It's his program plus the devotion the kids give to the task," says Weinbel. "He's considered one of the best weight coaches in the country." The weight-throw is an event not usually found in high school, where, of the three, only O'Keefe had some experience with it. (Jansson was a shot-putter in high school while Kania was a discus thrower.) At Dartmouth, they spend a couple of hours a day working out with weights to improve their skills. Half of their energy and time is spent in weight training and the other half is in technique and throwing. Kania had to work especially hard during the past year. He suffered a torn cartilage in his knee, had an operation, and didn't compete last year.

Another bright spot in winter track was the mile relay team. A junior, Julian Schmoke, and three seniors — Charles Nadler, Joseph Duncan, and Robert Coburn — were unbeaten in dual meets and Ivy League competition and won the Heptagonal championships. Weinbel compares the runners to the 1976 team's all-America performers.

Weinbel coached his 60-plus member track team to a 9-2 record in dual meets this past winter. Dartmouth finished fifth in the Ivy League at the Heptagonals. Since 1969, Weinbel and Wallen have coached the Big Green to 120 wins, 48 losses, and one tie. Over the past five years the team has posted a 35-5 mark in dual competition.

Ed Kania won everything in sight, then came in second in the NCAA championships.