To score points, each player makes his way through a six-wicket (hoop) course twice with the possibility of scoring 13 points--one per wicket and one extra point for hitting a central pin at the end.

Players can strike other balls but must pass a wicket within the next two shots. If they do not, the ball they hit is considered dead and cannot be struck again until the player scores a point.

"Both teams experienced deadness problems, but whoever gets through the wicket faster gains an advantage--and that's what we did," Meyer says.

In the championship game, Nottenbohm was the high shooter. Nottenbohn credited this to a year of croquet experience while he was attending school in England.

Harvard and Yale meet again in a croquet match the day before the Harvard-Yale football game. Until then, Myer wants people to perceive croquet as "a very sophisticated, very challenging game. Large mallets, narrow wickets. It's an orderly, strategic game."

Bannon is more direct: "It's not a joking sport."