Championship matches at table tennis tournaments sometimes draw over 150 people, but Crimson players in the early rounds often rely on table tennis club members for fan support.

"Sometimes roommates or good friends will come by and watch us play, but usually it's people from the club, who are just very enthusiastic about table tennis," team member Lifan Yang '99 says. "Mentally it would help us to have bigger crowds."

Radcliffe rugby wrote an article about its recent success and submitted it to The Crimson several weeks ago, and several other athletes complained about a lack of attention from campus media.

"I find it odd that a newspaper wouldn't want to know about what we're doing," men's squash player Andrew C. Walter '97 says. "But that's not why I play. I play to win, not to have other people know I win."

In addition to small crowds and a lack of media coverage, Jennifer L. Esty '97 says Radcliffe rugby had faced a reluctance from Radcliffe to take its only club sport seriously.

"Socially, sometimes women's rugby gets a bad rap, but every year that I've been here, Radcliffe has become more and more serious about rugby as a sport," Esty says. "I think it's because we've done so well that we've been taken more seriously."

Obstacles to Recognition

For most teams, the most frustrating roadblock is that a majority of students have no idea how their sports are played or scored.

Much of the Harvard community knows enough about football or basketball to enjoy a game, but the rules of, say, team sailing are not always obvious to a first-time spectator.

"At the Tufts team race, the Tufts coach sets up a microphone and does commentary for the crowd, explaining what's going on, because team racing is hard to understand," says J. Brett Davis '96, who placed second in the country in the fall in individual sailing competition.

The squash team has also suffered from the game's association with racquetball, not exactly the world's most popular spectator sport.

"To compare squash and racquetball, I would use the analogy of chess and checkers. Squash has a different ball, a different racket, different rules and a different court, but you're still in a big box, and that's like having the same checkered board," Barenbaum explains.

Men's fencing captain Lee R. Scheffler '98 admits that "most people don't know anything about the rules of fencing," but says his team also suffers because of the Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) facilities.

"When we fence at Yale, they have this balcony where a bunch of people can watch what's going on, but at the MAC there's just not much room for anyone to watch," Scheffler says.

C. Langdon Fielding '98, who finished among the top 12 riders at last year's equestrian nationals and has qualified again this year, says day-long horse shows are not well-suited to attract spectators.