Varsity track coach Jaakko Mikkola, who used to lie awake nights during the lean wartime years thinking up ways to beat juggernauts like Worcester Polytechnical and Milton Academy, is getting much more sleep these days. The reason is simple.

Harvard track is experiencing a post-war renaissance. Evolving from the carbon-copy war teams, the current Varsity machine now finds itself within striking distance of the Heptagonal ladder's top rung, which it occupied in the spring of 1942.

Chief obstacles in its path are Army, which together with NYU and Manhattan, has been riding high for the past few years, Navy, Pennsylvania, and perhaps Cornell. Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Columbia are not expected to do much damage during the rest of the indoor season or on the cinders this spring.

Some good hurdlers and middle distance runners, and Jack Hanley, 1945 IC4A cross-country winner, comprise the Big Green's scoring thrust, while Princeton has Cowle and Kelsey in the sprints, but little else. Yale, which the Crimson meets Saturday afternoon, glitters in spots. Columbia trailed in last spring's Heps.

Two causes are given for the Varsity's revival: the mass return of older, tested performers like Jack Fisher, Pete Garland, Wes Flint (captain), Bill Jackson, and Gene Harrigan and their spirit-producing willingness to absorb coaching finesse; and the quality of the coaching Head-coach Mikkola's reputation is worldwide. Freshman coach Ed Flanagan, whose record at Andover established him as one of the country's leading shot and field specialists, is new here.

Flanagan, particularly, has lavished attention on the Varsity weightthrowers, with the result that they have been winning so often that their point-getting ability is now taken for granted. Fisher, Felton, and Zeigler all throw better than 50 feet. Winner of last year's IC4A 35-pound weight-throw, Jack is carrying on a four-brother, Andover-Harvard family tradition.

Although coach Mikkola is getting the maximum amount of mileage out of his sprinters, this department, together with the broad-jump, is perhaps the weakest on the squad. Otherwise, the current track team bears the typical Mikkola stamp--overwhelmingly powerful in the field events, good in the hurdles, not so good in some of the running events.

No microscope is needed to see that the lean years are over. Crimson adherents can forget about wartime mediocrity and look forward to what may easily be one of the most golden seasons in Harvard track.