A new coach. A new look. And new success.

Despite a recent slump, the Harvard men's volleyball team (8-6, 0-4 EIVA) has swept two tournaments--the Northeastern Collegiate Volleyball Tournament and the Burgundy and Gray Invitational--without losing a single match. In the first tourney, the Crimson won 14 straight games and lost none.

Even in losing efforts, Harvard has held its own against highly touted Princeton and No. 16 Rutgers-Newark. It also boasts several national statistical leaders and has emerged as one of the region's hottest young teams.

The man behind it all is Coach Tom Wilson. Before coming to Harvard, Wilson helped lead regional powerhouse Wellesley to two straight top ten finishes in the NCAA women's tournament. Wellesley placed eighth in 1997 and third in 1998 with a combined record of 73-3 over the two years.

The Coach

With the perennial success of Wellesley, why would anyone leave a successful program to take over a Harvard team that was in the middle of the pack?

He didn't.

"I still work and coach at Wellesley partly because I love the players and staff there, partly because the men's and women's seasons do not overlap, and partly because I need to, for financial reasons," Wilson says. "Men's volleyball is a Tier II sport at Harvard, so the coaching position is only part-time. I have to supplement the income Harvard provides, and I can't imagine a more enjoyable second job than coaching at Wellesley."

Wilson brings to Harvard more than 20 years of volleyball expertise. His involvement with college volleyball began as a middle blocker for a club team at Central Missouri State University.

"Practice [on the club] was an excuse to get together with my friends and go party afterwards," Wilson says. "I only became serious about the sport after college, when some of my collegiate club teammates formed a USA Volleyball [league competition] men's team."

In the early 1980s, ex-national players dominated volleyball in the Midwest, so Wilson and company lost often. The defeats sparked Wilson's interest as a student of the game, however, eventually leading to his taking a position as a coach.

"We watched them [ex-national players] carefully and did our best to imitate them," he says. "We asked questions and read and thought a lot about the sport. Eventually--by the late '80s--we were able to beat them."

In 1991, Wilson and his wife moved to Boston. Luckily, he was able to join up with a batch of strong players, forming his own New England Seniors Team that has on several occasions battled in the medal round of the USA Volleyball National Championships.

Like the players he coaches, Wilson splits time on the court with time in the library. For the past several years, he has been working towards completing his Ph.D. in history at Brandeis University. He is scheduled to complete his dissertation on the emergence of scientific fraud as a conceptual category in the 17th and 18th centuries sometime during the summer of 1999.

"I hope to finish the remaining chapters this summer, partly because I've invested so much time in the project, and partly because the topic is fascinating." Wilson says.