This saturday against Yale, twenty-three seniors will suit up in Crimson for the final time in the Harvard careers.

The Last Lap takes place on Thursday night.

At the end of practice, with the rest of Harvard football still sweating beneath the stadium lights, the class of seniors will jog one loop around the field. Down the sideline, past the end zone, and back again.

Then they will line up and shake hands with everyone—freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and coaches. Whispered words. Sweaty hugs. Different people will use different phrases, but everyone will mean the same thing.

Congratulations. We made it. Thank you. Goodbye.

Twenty-three seniors. Some start every game and fill up the box score with yards and tackles. Others have never started, and never will.

Four from Texas, three from New Jersey, and three from Connecticut. The rest from around the country. Oregon and Wisconsin. Georgia and Pennsylvania.

No one weighs less than 180 pounds or stands below 5’11”. No one has survived four years without bruises, scrapes, pain, and often worse.

At least two—offensive lineman Max Rich and halfback Anthony Firkser—have a serious shot at making an NFL roster. In earlier seasons, both players competed alongside teammates who later went pro, and those mentors had a significant impact.

“[Ben] Braunecker I probably got the most close with,” said Firkser, naming the Chicago Bears’ tight end. “He was the main guy I looked to in style of play and his attitude out there.”

“There were three, and they all graduated last year—Anthony Fabiano, Cole Toner, and Adam Redmond,” Rich said; each of those players made NFL teams in some capacity.

For the rest of Harvard seniors, though, odds are that football will end when The Game does. On Saturday they will don pads, jerseys, and helmets. And later they will take all that off for the last time.

No senior class has accomplished what this one aims to do, namely win four straight Ivy League championships.

Already the cohort has won 35 games, yielding the third-highest winning percentage in school history. As freshmen, the players entered a dominant program, and they will leave one behind.

“A lot of guys in this current senior class are guys that maybe didn’t have the biggest role as freshmen,” safety Kolbi Brown said. “This being our time to shine, we’ve definitely stepped up to the plate and made a name for our class.”

However, the losses stand out more than the wins. There have not been many. One in 2013, when Princeton fought and fought for a 51-48 victory in triple overtime.