A Well-Kept Secret
Athletes from these under-recognized teams are quick to describe just what kind of action and entertainment the Harvard community is missing in their games.
For instance, those expecting a table-tennis match to be like a ping-pong game in the family basement will be surprised by Sanders' description of a typical match.
"You're usually about 15 feet from the other player, a little over 10 if you're both playing close. The points tend to be quite short, the ball slows down quickly, but it could start out around 120 miles per hour. By the time it gets to you, it'll be going around 60 to 75 mph and I've heard rpms from 4,000 to 10,000," Sanders says.
"It's incredible. If you just hold the paddle out, the ball will shoot off because of the spin," he adds.
According to Esty, a rugby match is "really 80 minutes of non-stop action," broken only by a few one-minute timeouts for injuries.
When a rugby player is tackled, she simply lays the ball down and the action continues. The two teams collide over the ball, and try to pitch it back to their teammates, while the tackled player tries to crawl out of the middle.
"It's a good sport to watch because it's tough and fast, and it's fun to watch people go out and go crazy. I think it's exciting to watch because you can tell it's exciting to play," she says. "It's good for people to go out and see women [who are] not afraid of being strong or getting muddy."
According to Walter, although the squash team currently includes the junior champions of India, Israel, Canada and the United Kingdom, and many top U.S. juniors, fans who avoid matches because they expect an unexciting Crimson rout are missing a lot.
"The myth that Harvard squash is unbeatable is far from true. There have been a number of really close matches, which we've just won. My freshman year, the national championship came down to the last match, and our number four player won it in overtime, 18-17," Walter says. "It fits my definition of entertainment."
Laura B. Stearns '98, who qualified for this year's singlehanded sailing nationals but had to drop out because of a knee injury, says this spring's team sailing matches against schools like MIT and Boston University (B.U.) will draw larger crowds because of their confrontational nature.
"It's more interesting because you'll see a Harvard boat go over and slam a B.U. boat so another Harvard boat can get ahead, or someone pull their boat into position so the breeze hits their boat and not a boat for the other team," Stearns says.
Soler promises a different, but equally entertaining, kind of action at croquet matches.
"The crowd is mostly our friends and people our friends know and people that know about croquet, and they come out basically to laugh at us, because they know we don't have a clue and all of those other teams have put so much into it and gotten course credit for it," he says.