Word: swims
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...usual for a Harvard swim team, not all the swimmers were regularly making practice. The standard policy had been if you were one of the two fastest men in your event you got to swim in the meet, regardless of how much you had been working out. The coaches and most of the swimmers recognized the secondary role swimming played for most of the swimmers and treated them accordingly...
...season was to beat Yale. Cahalan, not the coaches, decided to leave 200-yd. freestylers Al Ackerman and Henry Watson off the traveling team to Penn, ostensibly to stay at Harvard and work out for the upcoming Yale meet. Resentment toward Cahalan and his philosophy of rah-rah swimming was building, and the team wasn't quite sure how he had obtained so much power. However, everyone did want to beat Yale. They lost to Yale and all that was left were the Easterns. Usually, anyone who had qualified would get to go, but Ackerman. Watson and Rich Roebuck were...
...against such a background that a committee was formed to choose a new head swim coach for Harvard. The committee consisted of Cahalan, senior backstroker John Burris. Director of Athletics Robert Watson. Associate Director of Athletics Baron Pittenger Jr., Robert Kaufmann, senior tutor in Leverett House and a member of Harvard's last undefeated team in 1962. Assistant Dean of Freshmen Burriss Young and Assistant Director of Athletics Eric Cutler...
...Harvard athletic administration had different ideas. Baron Pittenger Jr. said that Harvard was looking for: a) A coach that would assume control and give direction to the team. There had definitely been dissatisfaction in the athletic office over the way the swim coaches had handled the Cahalan hassle, particularly the bad publicity they felt it received in the Crimson and elsewhere. b) "We wanted to attract the best coach possible." The sentiment expressed in numerous quarters was "Benn's a great guy but not a great coach." c) "We wanted a coach who understood the Harvard system and its philosophy...
Gambril confirmed that during the interview process Athletic Director Bob Watson and Co."...were not too pleased with the way the swim program was going"-and then hastily added, "but their aim was not to win championships." He was assured that if hired that was an expression of their belief that he would fit in well at Harvard and that the athletic administration would back him up in any decisions he made...