The story of Andrew Sudduth '83-5 is the type you usually see in the movies.

The rower--the first Harvard undergraduate to make the 1984 U.S. Olympic team--entered Harvard as a star athlete in 1979, but during his freshman year he was asked to leave for disciplinary reasons. Sudduth, however, has rebounded in style, using the time away from Cambridge to become one of the world's best oarsmen.

At Phillips Exeter he was recognized as a stand-out athlete in football, hockey and crew, and from there it was on to Harvard.

But the picture grew bleak as he faced trouble adjusting to college life. Within a year he had been placed on disciplinary warning and asked to take a year off.

"I was foolish," he says, speaking from Dartmouth College where most members of the Olympic crew team are training.

"I went to Exeter--a fairly strict environment where people had to check into their dorms at 10 p.m. Everyone was watched very closely.

"Harvard is a similar academic environment, but there is no limit on social life," he recalls.

His problem, he continues, involved a series of events which included a drunken night when he pulled a fire alarm and then set a fire with a home-made blow torch.

"The Ad Board especially didn't appreciate the combination," the Computer Science concentrator says. At the time, he was "pretty upset," by their decision, "but looking back," he says, "they probably made the right move."

Out of college and off the crew team, his situation did not appear especially bright.

Sudduth did not give up, but came back harder, as rowing became his primary occupation and the Olympics his goal.

"In the summer of 1982. I began to question what I was doing, the Olympics were two years away, and I wasn't sure I wanted to do all the work," he says.

Sudduth, a native of Exeter, New Hampshire, took another year off voluntarily in Washington, D.C. where he finally made up his mind to try for the Olympics.

"He's very determined and works very hard. He has a great commitment to excellence in everything he does," says his father, S. Scott Sudduth. "That's what's gotten him where he is."

"Technically he's just incredible, but more importantly, he's just great at killing himself," says one member of Harvard's crew team. "No one even comes close to him on the ergometer," he adds.