"They want me to try soccer style, so I'll try soccer style," Part McInally said as he sat on the wet grass outside Harvard Stadium Saturday morning, lacing a pair of football cleats. "But boy, my ass is sure sore. I've never done it before. I can't do it worth shit."

McInally stood up and placed a soccer ball about 20 feet in front of the green baseball backstop next to Watson Rink. He studied the ball for an instant, then flung his lanky frame at it, arms and legs flying in clutzy precision. THWACK! His foot hit the ball. THUD! The ball hit the wooden backstop and bounced back to McInally. He frowned.

He kicked the ball again. THWACK! His foot made contact. THUD! The ball hit wood. McInally stopped the ball with his foot and kicked it again. But this kick didn't please him any more than the last. He was hitting the ball with the wrong part of his foot.

"It looks so awkward," he said to Jim Brynteson, a senior who was there to help McInally practice. McInally is not accustomed to soccer-style kicking. He didn't kick that way in high school and he didn't kick that way at Harvard, where until he graduated last year he was the school's biggest football star in over 30 years.

He set all sorts of records as a split end, but his kicking pleased him the most: Long, booming punts and kickoffs that drew gasps from the crowd even as McInally sauntered cockily back to the sidelines.

He kicked footballs with his toe then, but now his employers, the Cincinnati Bengals of the NFL, want him to kick with his instep, soccer style. They figure he will be a better kicker that way. They also figure that this is the time to teach him new tricks: McInally broke his leg and fractured his ankle in the College All-- Star Game last August, and has sat out the season thus far.

The leg and ankle are better now, so the Bengals sent their untested rookie back to Massachusetts to work out with a kicking specialist in Milford, which is why Pat McInally, on the morning of the Dart-mouth game, found himself standing in a drizzle outside Soldier's Field, practicing.

THWACK! THUD:" I can't do it," McInally said. The ball came to rest near his foot.

THWACK! THUD! "I just hurt my fucking knee."

THWACK! THUD! "Ican still flip bottle caps," he said, picking one up and flipping it. The cap zipped gracefully through the air. McInally watched it, smiled, and returned to kicking the soccer ball, which now had wet blades of grass clinging to it.

THWACK! THUD! Jim Brynteson offered some advice. "Too much whirlwind," he said. "Use the whirwind at the beginning, not the end." McInally was still hitting the ball with his toe, not his instep.

THWACK! THUD! "Goooood!" McInally said. It felt right that time. "Oh boy!"

THWACK! THUD! Too much toe.

THWACK! THUD! Too much toe again. "Years and years," McInally muttered, discouraged.

Thirty yards behind McInally, the field was full of people, but none seemed to notice him. They were watching Radcliffe field hockey, or next to it, Harvard rugby. Occasionally a huge cheer would go up. The Harvard and Dartmouth bands were on faraway fields practicing their halftime shows, and McInally could hear the music as he kicked. It was only a couple of hours before game time. Tailgaters with picnic spreads were arriving, and McInally knew that inside Dillon Field House, the football team would soon be showering and dressing, getting tape applied, getting ready.