About 20 members of the football team will end their gridiron careers tomorrow.
"I'm very sad, very sentimental about playing my last game for Harvard Saturday." said Brad Fenton, one of Harvard's first-string safeties and a probable All-Ivy choice. "Chris Doyle and I plan to set aside some time either Saturday night or Sunday afternoon just to cry about it," he added.
'Biggest Thing'
"Football is now the biggest thing in my life," he continued. "Studies were first before, but this season I decided to apply 100 per cent of my energy to football. I've worked much harder, but I've also enjoyed it much more," he added.
For Fenton a victory tomorrow against Yale would lessen the sorrows connected with playing his last game. He has never played on a team that has beaten Yale, he felt insulted by the lowly rating that Harvard received from pre-season prognosticators. and he's anxious to prove himself equal to the pressure generated by the status of tomorrow's game.
Pillow-Thoughts
"For the past few nights I've been thinking just before I go to bed about the plays Yale will throw at us and about all the great plays that I'll respond with," Fenton said yesterday. "When I think like that on my pillow, I know I'll be up for the game," he added.
Fenton has been a starter since last year's Dartmouth game, trails only Gary Farneti in tackles-made by a Harvard player this year, and is rarely beaten on a pass play. His defensive style is reckless. complete with bone-crunching tackles and dives to break up pass plays.
Measurements
Fenton is listed at 5'10", 180 pounds-measurements that usually give him a huge statistical disadvantage in playing his tight-end opponents, but he shrugs it off as "a chance to prove myself."
He flatly rejects the idea that football players relate the sport to their social lives as "crap," thinking instead that it is an ego trip for most of them, including himself.
In his almost disarmingly frank style, he said that his biggest incentive to work hard this year has been the opportunity he has "to play the role of a hero."
"As a freshman, I was about as close to the bottom as anyone can get, now I'm about as close to the top that I'll ever get, and I enjoy it very much," he said.
Fenton plans to enter medical school next fall, but although he has applied he is wary about attending Harvard Medical School because, as he puts it, "I know I'd be sitting in the stands every Saturday and that would be pretty painful."
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