They fetch the water and carry the towels, they handle sweaty garments and take a lot of good-natured abuse, but they love it. Harvard's athletic managers, as unique a set of characters as you would ever hope to see, go about their tasks as quietly as possible, bothering few people and haunting the H.A.A., looking for team publicity wherever they can find it--all this for a letter and major athletic credits.

Maybe it sounds a little uneventful, but try and tell that to any self-respecting manager and see what happens. Nurtured by a competition, especially in the more popular sports, which is every bit as terrifying as Crimson Competitions used to be, these habitues of the tennis shoe and the looker room are often idolators of the sport they represent. It may be crew, it may be parcheal, they're all alike.

Take Julian Crocker, for instance. This emotional Junior, who handled the hockey team through its super-successful season this winter, epitomizes all that a manager should be. To see Julian grow ecstatic over his beloved puck-handlers is like nothing in all this world. Arthur Sampson was so intrigued by all of Julian's spirit that he devoted two of his Herald columns to the Crocker legend--probably the first time in history a college manager was ever so glorified.

For them as hasn't read Mr. Sampson's delightful anecdotla, let it here be noted that on the trip to West Point (a Journey on which Julian wanted every photographer from every Boston paper to see the club off--by the way, he's obsessed by pictures), he hustled the entire team off to sleep in cozy Pullman berths, only to discover the tickets called for coach reservations. And his adherence to the Chesterfield-carnation tradition, a regalla sported at every Crimson rink contest by manager and coach, is only too familiar to Harvard hockey enthusiasts. Julian was more than slightly perturbed when Coach Johnny Chase appeared at the play-off of the Yale game Chesterfielded and carnationed, but without a black derby--an added touch saved for the Yale game and sacred to Julian. Chase's light brown fedora saw the Crimson win, though. Murray Murdoch (ex-Ranger puckster who coaches the Blue) had on a natty gray fedora with a gray, pin-striped suit.

If Julian typifies the aggressive, perhaps fanatical (they're all lovable) manager, Dave Place, genial custodian of the managerial duties of the football field, succeeds in quite another way. Place, along with Dave Arnold under the co-managerial set-up the H.A.A. was forced to adopt because of the war, had charge of the largest gang of neophyte ball-gatherers and towel-holders of all sports. In football managing, one's attitre is strictly de rigeur.

A Freshman aspirant wears white ducks, white sneakers and a white sweat shirt, with his name stenciled on the back, a la West Point. By the time he is a Sophomore, our little friend is still white-ducked and white sneakered, but he has a black sweater to protect him from the often icy blasts of Soldiers Field. Since people generally know you when you're a Sophomore manager, the name tape is unnecessary. In fact, "hey, you!" is a term applied far more often to what were once known as Yardlings, stencil or no stencil, than it is to anonymous Sophomores who are roaming around. There is nothing come if faut for Place and Arnold. They direct all the lesser lights around, and care for such things as trips (most difficult item on any manager's agenda) and tickets. Dave, of course, didn't have to worry about publicity for the team--people seem to like to read about football--but the vast amount of bookkeeping, and the problems of organization are like these of no other sport.

Dick Eckert and Harry Poole, who pull Harvard's basketball strings, managerially speaking, adopt a middle-of-the-road attitude. Eckert sometimes has semi-fanatical tendencies, being a hoopster of no mean proportions himself, and has been known at times to grow irate when his worthies have been blasphemed by local college journals, but Dick is more prone to tend efficiently to his duties, as is Harry. And God help the opposing manager who tries to jockey with the time clock. When the Harvard five went out west this winter, it was Eckert who wrote the stories for local papers. Dress, for these men, is informal.

Bill Gentry, major dome of swimming managers (all of whom wear white ducks, shirts, sneakers--fashion note) has an added duty common to only a few of his clan. At every home meet, Bill is the MC, and his customary shyness must be disspelled for the moment as he announces to an adoring throng that Geoligan won the 50 yard dog paddle in exactly six seconds flat. For the Eastern intercollegiates last weekend, Gentry added a dapper white jacket to his costime. It had that certain touch.

Dick Allen, who handles soccer, is another of the super-efficient boys, and so is Frank Billings, baseball bigwig. Art Lehman does some announcing as fencing manager, but he doesn't have Gentry's audience. Brad Perkins, Jaakko Mikkola's aide de camp, dons the togs for a daily jog, and Ollie Ames, who handled golf last spring, was one of the few player-managers.

This by no means circles the athletic square--to catalogue all Harvard managers is a prodigious task in itself, and perhaps in a later digression they, too, will be paid homage.... Pass that towel, boy.