"John is steady and meticulous," his counterpart comments. "I'm more flamboyant and he keeps me from getting carried away."

Both captains began running in junior high, but took it up seriously in high school. Perkins started his track career as a sprinter, then moved to middle-distance events when the entered Princeton (N.J.) High School.

"I was too slow for the 100," he says, "When I got to high school, the coach put me in the hall-mile and that was it."

In his senior year, Perkins ran in the mile at the New Jersey state championships and finished second, behind future teammate Cliff Sheehan.

However, when Perkins arrived at Harvard he played junior varsity hockey instead of running track.

"My high school track program was very intense and when I got here, I was burned out," he explains. After one season, however, of sitting on the J.V. hockey benefit, Perkins decided to return to-track for the outdoor season.

"I started running again because it was something I wanted to do, not just something I'd always done," he says.

Although his performance that spring were disappointing, Perkins has showed steady improvement since his return to running and is now running as well as he as ever has.

Ezejo-Okoye was born in England but spent most of his first four years in Nigeria. A few months after the Nigeria-Biafra war broke out. Ezeji-Okoye, his mother and sister escaped on a French ammunitions plane and returned to England.

The entire Ezeji-Okoye family headed to Canada in 1970, after Steve's rather rejoined the family. A few years later, the future track captain returned to England to attend Clifton College, a secondary school, and it was there that he started competing in the hurdles.

he arrived at Harvard unrecruited and unsure of himself. A series of mishaps in his first few meets did title to boost his confidence.

"I began to wonder if I could cut it," he says. "I kept expecting [Harvard Coach] Frank [Haggerty] to rank me."

However, Haggerty stuck with the hurdler and by the end of the indoor season, he was winning the 55-meter hurdles.

Whole both Ezeji-Okoye and Perkins have evolved as runners during their four years at Harvard, both have unconventional running style.

"It's a good thing that running just like ski jumping, where scoring is a combination of performance and style." Ezeji-Okoye says with a smile. "Because of the were, John wouldn't win anything."

Of course neither would I.