“I’ve had some captains that, through their sheer authority and wanting to make sure the team did well would almost distance themselves from their teammates just to make sure the team stayed focused and did what they had to do to be successful,” Murphy says. “I think Dante does a good job balancing being a captain and also being one of the guys.”
“From what I can see, nothing much has changed except that now he addresses us as a team from time to time,” Everett says. “As long as I’ve been here, he has consistently been one of the hardest workers and a lead-by-example guy.”
Though Balestracci has been successful in that regard, the road taken by this year’s Crimson squad has been arduous and the obstacles its captain has faced have been numerous. Injuries and the untimely defeats to which they contributed have made this season and its outcome—regardless of the result against Yale—far less successful than originally anticipated.
And though he isn’t the cause, that frustration has weighed particularly heavily on Balestracci’s shoulders.
“You feel more responsible for everything that’s going on with the team,” Balestracci says. “Whether it’s playing well or playing poorly or just like the day-to-day things. Good practices, bad practices, things like that.”
Keeping the team together and as strong as possible under the circumstances isn’t always easy. With two-deep players rotating in and out, the confidence level overall began to wane, but Balestracci has prevented the squad from losing heart.
“Basically at team meetings I’m saying, ‘It doesn’t matter who we have in there,’” Balestracci says. “Our backups are good. Our backups at other places would be starting. We have that much talent on our team. Talking to the guys, talking with guys like [QB] Garrett [Schires ‘05], talking with guys that are stepping up and filling in for all the injuries we’ve had this year and saying, ‘You’re as good as the guy you’re going to line up against, if not better, and you’re definitely going to get the job done.’”
And when they didn’t, when Dartmouth rolled into Harvard Stadium and upset the then-undefeated Crimson on its own turf, Balestracci was there to right the course.
“I basically said, ‘Defensively we’re not getting it done. We didn’t get it done against Lafayette, Princeton or Dartmouth,’” Balestracci says. “I really tried to get into people’s heads that we needed to have better practices, have more focus during practice, make more plays during practice.”
The defense surrendered just 16 points the next time out and would have given up only nine were it not for an untimely late-game interception.
But now the focus is not on the past, but on the final game of Balestracci’s collegiate career.
“It’s my last game at Harvard, it’s probably going to be the game that I remember this season by,” Balestracci says. “If we win at Yale, it makes it much easier to forget that we lost to Penn, that we lost to Columbia, that we lost to Dartmouth. You can say that we went out with a win, that we went out successful, and that’s really how you’re measured as a Harvard football player.”
* * *
And so, one last time, Dante Balestracci will step away from his teammates, huddled tightly behind him, and begin the walk across the field. One last time will he look his opponents in the eye as they stand opposite him. One last time will he be a man apart.
—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.