My coach recently asked me what makes a team successful.

A team can be a funny thing: a little social system within itself, an organism all its own. Analyzing one's own experiences on them can be even more difficult, for the valleys are more dismal and the mountains more climactic than any individual pursuit.

I have had the fortune of being part of three Harvard men's swimming and diving teams that have won conference titles and had varying success at the NCAA Championships, but what made some perform better than others is a little more difficult to figure out than I originally planned.

Of course--since I am writing this column--I have thought it through and come up with an elementary answer. This answer does not come from one isolated aspect of sport or team, but a healthy interaction between a number of factors.

First and foremost, a team needs what Queen Latifah would call U-N-I-T-Y. (That's a unity.) This does not come from eating meals together or partying together or even living together.

Unity on a sports team comes from--I realize it sounds corny--genuine caring about the well-being of teammates. The secret formula to team-building still eludes most coaches and athletes, but if a team is comprised of people interested in each other on a personal as well as an athletic level, unity is just around the corner.

Now, when I talk about unity I am not talking about conformity. This is crucial. A team consists of individuals that differ in interests, talents, and tastes. God knows we don't want 41 Tim Martins to be a team, it would simply be unbearable.

This oneness of the team does not come easily, make no mistake about that, and sometimes a few people indeed will never relinquish individual interest for team solidarity. However, it must come because it permeates every other aspect of the team, including competition.