Each June for the last three years a locker in the coaches' room at Newell Boat House has been left vacant over the summer and regularly a new coach's clothes have hung there the next all. The crew shorts this fall belong to Derrick Wilde, University single sculling champion who succeeds Lee Rouner as the new 150 pound varsity and freshman coach. Rouner, who rowed with the varsity heavies for two years, is now in University Hall as an assistant dean of freshmen.

Wilde is the third former Crimson oarsman who has returned to coach the lightweights. Last fall Rouner stepped in for Ted Reynolds who graduated from the Business School after one year of coaching. The season before that, Reynolds replaced the venerable Bert Haines, who taught the 150 pounders the finer art of catch and release for over 30 years.

This coaching round-robin is a problem the Crimson carsmen share with the five other eastern colleges who race 150s. Three years ago Harvard crews were the only ones with a full-time coach. But with the retirement of Bert Haines in 1952 they too joined the carsmen of Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, and Pennsylvania who learned from a part time coach, part-time graduate student.

Salaries Insufficient

Athletic budgets have taken most of the blame for this merry-to-round of mentors. The facts are that going salaries for full-time 150 coaches are not enough to support hem all year.

So far the succession has worked well at Harvard since Reynolds and Rouner had four years apprenticeship at Newell. Wilde will no doubt do as well with his three years as a 150 oarsman and top sculler background.

The job may have its drawbacks, however, when the H.A.A. must look outside the University for its new coaches. It will be tough on a new man to break in green oarsmen when he's green himself. And it will be tougher on his crew who lost a sense of coaching continuity from one season to the next.

Harvard has not had to face this problem as yet. And with a ready supply of graduate students, it is unlikely that it ever will. Nevertheless a part-time coach, part-time student, is not the same as a regular man, and when considering the record of the 150 crew, it's ever changing coaching staff must be considered.