An often unnoticed but widely appreciated part of the Harvard intramural set-up is the individual athletics program. If you haven't been able to suit your needs and desires through the freshman intramural or intercollegiate programs, you'll almost certainly find something here. Activities, with instructors and group leaders, range from different styles of karate to pistol-shooting to horseback riding.

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The Ivy League has a bad reputation because of its low quality football, but in virtually every sport some Ivy team, often Harvard's, can keep up with any college in the U.S. last year. Harvard had Ivy champion in football, hockey, lightweight crew, and national champions in heavyweight crew and squash.

Harvard teams last year sported a .668 winning percentage against Ivy teams, and a .665 percentage overall, both best in the Ivy League.

The three major sports at Harvard are football, hockey and crew in the fall, winter, and spring respectively.

These are the "major" sports because of the number of people that play them, the money spent on them, the fact that all three still maintain freshman and junior varsity squads, and the amount of attention and interest given to these sports by the students and alumni.

For a freshman, making the first team in any of these three sports is quite an accomplishment. Football attracts a large number of ex-high school standouts among its 100-150 candidates each fall.

Though nobody is every officially cut from the football team, attrition usually dwindles the number sticking it out to the end of the year to about 50. Because of the number of people, and the short amount of time that coaches have to form a team, people with the biggest buildups and credentials get the most attention, and the also-rans get overlooked.

The story of one freshman quarterback who was an All-City quarterback in Detroit should serve as an example. "I would come to practice every day. Apparently the coaches hardly even looked at me. Some guy from Miami had bigger credentials, and he got all their attention. It was then that I decided I had better things to do with my time, so I quit after the first week." The "guy from Miami" was Jim Stoeckel, who went on to set a number of Harvard quarterback records.

Hockey is perhaps the most competitive sport at Harvard because of the large number of top-quality players Harvard has, top-quality enough to rank Harvard second in the nation last year, and a perennial ECAC tournament qualifier.

Harvard's JV team could have beaten at least half of Harvard's varsity opponents last year. So unless you happen to be very good at it, forget about playing hockey at Harvard.

It is said that crew is the last masochistic sport left at Harvard. It is also about the only sport where prior experience in rowing is not a prerequisite to making the varsity. As a matter of fact, 75 per cent of Harvard rowers never touched an oar before coming here.

The only trouble is there are about 100 candidates each year for both the heavy and light freshmen crews. As with football, this number dwindles considerably after the freshman get a look-see at nine-month rigors of rowing and training.

All the other sports at Harvard can be lumped together and termed as minor--including basketball. A few squads can be reached by freshmen with little experience, such as squash, fencing, golf, track and even soccer, if you are willing to put a great deal of effort and determination into it.

Others, such as basketball, swimming, and tennis, can only be played on an intercollegiate level if you played them in high school.