You might also want to check out the rugby team. Rugby is not a varsity sport, even though it attracts as many participants as any sport here except football. Rumor has it the reason the team refuses to take varsity status is that it would then have to spend less money on beer. Their staggering booze intake not-withstanding, the ruggers were the best team in the East last year and finished second in the country.
Soon the winter comes, with reading period hot on its tail. The truly sportif, however, remain undaunted. Many folks come to Harvard unschooled in the joys of college hockey, but one winter usually enlightens them This is not the NFL--no fighting here. Rather, it is clean, fast, exciting hockey and Harvard has a grand tradition. Times had been lean until last year, until the icemen (as they are known in Crimson headlines) pulled off the upset of the year in the Beanpot, the annual Boston-area collegiate championship at the Boston Garden. Coach Bill Cleary's boys should improve substantially this year, and provide their partisans with more triumphs.
Basketball has long been a wasteland at Harvard, but those days seem emphatically over. Crippled by the worst facility this side of Moskva--the ancient and decrepit Indoor Athletic Building--the hoopsters could not convince any serious ballplayers to spend four years here. But the team has a new arena under construction. Briggs Cage, a few good recruiting years under its belt, and a first-ever Ivy championship within reach. Look for coach Frank McLaughlin (the Bronx's Ambassador to Harvard) and his squad to give traditional powers Penn and Princeton a run for the laurels this year.
Harvard men's squash has presided over an old dynasty and men's swimming over a new one, but despite their regional prominence, neither appeal to many people outside of a small, dedicated group of followers. Suffice it to say, if you haven't played squash before (read: gone to prep school), you're not going to have much chance of making the squash team. And further, if you haven't swum in high school, you're not going to be able to join crafty coach Joe Bernal's talented team in cushy Blodgett Pool.
Spectator sports go the way of the frost come spring; sure, some people go to lacrosse (particularly to see Harvard's women's team, best in the East last year) and a few watch the baseball team, and a couple more put on their lime pants to watch the crew races, but not many people do any of that. The men's tennis team, which bested Princeton and advanced to the national championships last year for the first time ever, did so in virtual privacy. It may be academic vigilance, rampant romance or, most likely, mere tradition, but Harvard thrill-seekers tend to head toward Fenway Park rather than Soldiers Field in the spring.
That's really too bad. On the basis of performance against other schools, Harvard is probably best in the spring. The Harvard crew, for example, is legendary. Coached by stone-countenanced and mysterious Harry Parker, the heavyweights have dominated the nation for years. The heavies finally lost their annual four-mile race with Yale in June for the first time in 19 years. (Rumors that crew alums subsequently left Parker alone in a room with a loaded pistol did not, however, prove accurate).
Sports at Harvard can, in general, be a happy part of anyone's life here. A good rule to remember is this: Never assume anyone else's level of interest is the same as your own, and respect him or her for it. Most people fall somewhere between the library-bound wonks and the slow-witted jocks, and manage to carve a satisfactory (for them) portion of athletic turf to call their own--whether it's in the stands or on the field. Rarely enough do Harvard students get to control their relations with the University; sports are a happy exception.