"Horse shows are a little traditional, and you can't yell while people are going over jumps, just because of the way horses are. You're only supposed to cheer at the end of the ride," Fielding says. "We get some people, but it's kind of hard to ask someone to see six hours of horse show when I jump for all of a minute."

The (Low) Roar of the Crowd

Radcliffe rugby attracted its largest crowd in memory for last fall's championship match of the Northern Rugby tournament, a 3-0 win over Yale that clinched a place in this summer's four-team national tournament.

"Usually we have about 30 people, a lot of the fan support is our team, but at the Northern Rugby finals, it was amazing, it was this thick band of people," Maggie S. Hatcher '98 says. "I was running down the field going "I know that person, I know that person,' and then I realized I had better not look over."

"[The big crowd] really pumped us up, and that's a big part of rugby. Just hearing the crowd when it's like that is amazing," Esty says. "The home field advantage was a big help against Yale."

Davis said the biggest crowd he had ever seen at a sailing race was this fall at MIT, when spectators on the roof of the MIT boathouse were positioned in front of a crucial turning buoy.

"It was a windy day, and they had the buoy for a tight turn, and the fans would cheer if a boat tipped over or something," he says. "You can't think about it too much, but it's pretty exciting if you're coming down the course towards that turn and you can hear the spectators cheering in the back of your mind."

Harvard vs. Goliath

The success of many club teams seems even more amazing in light of the well-supported and sometimes varsity-level programs they face from other schools. Harvard prides itself on offering a wide variety of sports, but Crimson teams often face squads whose schools have chosen to dominate lesser-known sports.

"Equestrian is a varsity sport at Dartmouth and Brown, and there are schools down South where people go just to ride horses," Fielding says. "Frequently, I tell people here that I'm on the equestrian team, and they say, 'Oh, I didn't know Harvard had a horse team.'"

The table tennis team placed in the top eight nationally last year, and team member Charles H. Sanders '97 says his team frequently faces schools from Maryland and the Carolinas which recruit players from across the country for varsity-level programs.

"They actually have entire dorms reserved just for table tennis players. The University of Maryland didn't attend nationals last year, because it coincided with the Olympic trials and they were all there," Sanders says. "The National Table Tennis Center is in Maryland, so recruiting for them is a breeze. It's like Notre Dame, where everybody wants to go there."

Even squash players, with a program that is among the largest of its kind in the country, envies opponents with more numerous and vocal fans.

"At Princeton, when we play there, it's like a zoo. There are kegs in the balcony, a bunch of alumni come back, it's like a football game. We really wish we could get the kind of turnout that they do," says women's captain Ivy C. Pochoda '98.

"Last year, our home match against Princeton in no way resembled what it was like there. There were more fans than usual, but there was no sort of hullabaloo like at Princeton," adds Pochoda, who is a Crimson editor. "We haven't been able to recreate that same kind of energy here."