In medicine, It's called a placebo: the mind is powerful enough to create a cure from the thought of a cure If Carrabino really thinks that the nap is necessary for good performance. If very well might be.

Varsity spiker Dovle, for instance, always wears a grey Harvard shirt when playing in volleyball games. However, "One time, when we were playing Princeton, it didn't work," he says. "But, I took off my shirt, and then did well for the rest of the game."

"It's not like [superstition] controls me," he adds. "But in sports, you want every added advantage you can get. That's the whole deal."

Coach of the men's varsity swimming team Joe Bernai says, "When you step up to that block, it's 90-percent psychological and 10-percent physical. At that point you need a psychological massage."

For many swimmers, that dependence is on their crimson Harvard towels. "I' they forget their Harvard towel, they walk around talking to themselves about it." How that affects performance no one can say, he adds.

Bernal is not exempt from the psychological massage himself. When he coached swimming at Fordham University, he used to go straight from his job to the pool without changing out of his three-piece suit.

"Even in the very important meets we had against St. John's and Villanova, I never had time to change," says the 66-3 coach. Still, it did not become a ritual until one meet at which he had time to change out of his suit.

"We were beaten badly," he says. And, since then, the complete three-piece suit on the swim deck has been his trademark.

Women's varsity swimmer and backstroke specialist Elaine Sang '87 sits behind the starting blocks ten minutes before she is scheduled to swim. "If I do poorly, I don't think it's because I was there really early. But if I don't get behind the blocks early, I can then blame my performance on it."

If she ran right up to the block seconds before the starting pistol, and then performed amazingly, would she change her ritual? "I might think it over a bit," the swimmer says.

Harvard athletes are not alone in the world of sports and superstition. Tennis players are notorious for not stepping on the court's lines. Baseball players and managers carefully step over the foul line.

Clothing too is ritualized. According to tennis team Co-Captain Beckman, Vilas Gerutalis will not play without the headband that up to now served him well. When someone stole it. Gerutalis "raised a ruckus" about locating it quickly.

"It's all really silly," he says. "You know you'll always be there. You just want a little extra."

"I always wipe the bottom of my sneakers with my right hand, then my left," says Sean P. Doyle '85, a varsity volleyball player. "I put everything on right to left." Doyle has been doing this for five years.