Rogers, who may study Earth and Planetary Sciences or Statistics, also had a formidable schedule to contend with.

“It’s a little challenging because it’s everything that I wanted, plus four hours of athletics a day,” she said.

Rogers is not alone in sensing the structural impediments joining a team impose on that “vision” for a varied college schedule. Often, according to some College administrators, students must choose between sacrificing their other interests or committing to their team. But walk-ons often have had the chance to explore other facets of college prior to increasing their athletic commitments, perhaps more so than their recruited peers.

As Dean of Freshmen Thomas A. Dingman ’67 said, “It might be that [walk-ons] didn’t step up as early in the process. Some of those folks may not have made the same sort of commitment early on and,” for example, “have found themselves able to have a wider network of friends.”

Community or ‘Cult?’

That network, however, often has trouble weathering the storm of team-filled days on end. Brandon N. Wachs ’18, a standout prospect from San Diego who never doubted his intention to play college baseball but was not a formal recruit, was more surprised by the social limitations created by joining Harvard’s baseball team than by any changes to his schedule. Walking on to a team, for many students, means socializing primarily with other athletes.

“I think it limits you from meeting other people that you would meet when you’re part of clubs or the paper or other things that you can do on campus,” Wachs said. “With sports, it really limits you to one extracurricular.”

Reasons both structural and cultural contribute to this limitation. For Wachs and baseball, for instance, near-weekly team mixers changed the color of his fall social experience. According to Wachs, between mixers, practice, and traveling with his teammates, he spends much of his time with the same group of student-athletes. “There’s a little bit of exclusiveness,” he said.

“In the most positive way you can say the word,” added Morgan-Scott about the swimming and diving team’s atmosphere, “it’s like a cult.”

Indeed, for Wachs and Morgan-Scott, their participation in a varsity athletic team offers them a unique and nearly constant source of friendships and social activity. After freshman orientation, Morgan-Scott said, “nightlife turned into team parties.” He and his teammates planned social events within the athlete community, such as mixers with other sports teams.  

“You always had a group of friends that were pre-designated to be your friends and people to be very close to,” Morgan-Scott said.

To Wachs, it would be difficult to “match the camaraderie with teammates outside of sports.”

“I don’t know what you would do to duplicate that,” Wachs said. “That’s a big upside to playing a sport.”

Yet as Wachs and others note, the underside of camaraderie can be social limitation. Students say that walking on can prevent students from making friends outside of their team. Team members arrange regular meals together, and often meet up after practice hours to do schoolwork, sometimes leaving little time to branch out.

To Dingman, this sometimes translates into athletes participating less in residential life. “We see it in the Yard. We see athletes exempting themselves from study breaks, just not being full participants,” he said. “I think they miss out on some of the rich diversity of the place.”