This has been a week just like any other week in the Harvard athletic community. Three varsity athletes decided to hang up their sneakers and sweats and turn their energy elsewhere. But this time it was female sensation Nancy Boutilier, varsity player in three sports, and junior butterflyer Kathleen McCloskey. And when the men's basketball team hit the courts last Thursday it was without the presence of three-year varsity player Robert Taylor.

Sadly enough for Harvard athletics these players are not alone. Ask any athletes if they know of outstanding players who've quit and you won't just get names--you'll get lists.

Is Harvard unique in the number of ex-athletes walking around campus? Or is the high rate of player attrition inherent in the nature of Ivy League programs and the type of athletes attracted to them?

"I never expect a serious athlete to quit," says Carole Kleinfelder, women's basketball coach, adding, "People who drop out are in the sport for the wrong reason."

Based on her own athletic experience, Boutilier, who just last week decided to take a leave from school for the rest of the year, disagrees. "I don't believe what Vince Lombardi says, that winners never quit. At this school some of the best winners quit.

"At Harvard an athlete's identity is rarely subsumed by his or her sport--the player has the confidence to say, 'I don't need this because I'm something else,'" Boutilier explains.

Although the reasons athletes quit are as diverse as the players themselves, certain attitudes and complaints appear common.

"I was so committed to my sport when I came here that if I could have fit six years of swimming into four I would have done it," remembers Ron Raikula, a world-ranked swimmer who retired at the end of his sophomore year.

This attitude reflects the mental, if not financial, commitment most athletes feel when they arrive at Harvard, intending to complete for four years.

The most common explanation given by athletes who have decided to leave a team is "the chance to do other things." But, with a little delving, other factors emerge--usually an unsatisfactory coach-athlete relationship.

The picture of the typical Harvard coach one gets from talks with various athletes is flawed: young, intelligent and articulate--but missing the ability to communicate with his or her players.

"I don't know if it's that they're seasoned only as press releases, but they're missing the qualities of sincerity and true camaraderie there should be between coach and player," is how one ex-athlete expresses it. "Before I came here I always felt that when I played it was for the coach and team, but once here I could feel the emphasis shifting and I began to play for myself--that's when I decided it wasn't worth it," is how ex-varsity basketball player Dave Coatsworth views his experience.

"If there's going to be a scapegoat here it's going to be the coach," says one coach pragmatically. But coaches often see the breakdown in player-coach relations as rooted in the athlete who, perhaps because of the absence of scholarships, feels no commitment to either the coach or team.

"Sometimes I feel like it's a one-way street," says Frank McLaughlin, men's basketball coach, adding, "If the athletes have no commitment to me why should I have a commitment to them--when they cut both me and the team short."

Another coach admits, "I've never gotten the personal rewards here that I have at other schools. The athletes want to take more than they're willing to give."