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There’s a place, buried deep in the basement of 14 Plympton Street, where I’ve had some of my most trying moments as a Harvard student. It’s a humble black couch, with a blanket on it probably left over from the Clinton administration, where I could lay down and rest for 15 minutes before journeying back up to the Sports Cube. To edit one more article. Write one more paragraph. Think of one more headline.

As my eyes fluttered shut, I often asked myself the same simple question: why? Why do we subject ourselves to demanding deadlines, exacting editorial standards, relentless revising? More specifically, why do we work so hard to produce top-notch sports coverage, at a school where more students know Latin than the rules of college football?

The answer that I gave myself, invariably, was the same: It’s the people, stupid.

Early on in my time at the Crimson, “people” meant those within the organization who supported me. When I comped during my freshman spring, lacking an iota of experience with sportswriting, a group of inspirational upperclassmen kept me invested in the board: Noah Jun, Zing Gee, AJ Dilts, Alex Wilson, and Griffin Wong thoroughly convinced me that the Sports Board was the most eclectic and fun group of people in the building.

During my sophomore year, under Griffin’s tutelage, I figured out who the “people” were that made sports journalism truly worthwhile: the players, coaches, family members, and fans who religiously follow Harvard’s teams. Griffin gave me a masterclass in relationship-building, helping me to understand that a passing conversation with a player in the hallway can be as important to the long-term development of your beat as a sit-down interview with the coach.

In each feature I wrote about Harvard football from 2022-2024, many with the help of Griffin and, later, the extraordinary duo of Jo Lemann and Praveen Kumar, I worked to make the reader understand the individual stories driving the game forward. In an era where attention spans are low and entire sagas of striving, grit, and triumph are reduced into three-minute highlight reels, I think it is more important than ever to produce deeply-reported journalism that compels the reader to sit down and ask difficult questions about the teams they love. Questions like these:

How does a Harvard football team captain, a biomedical engineering major beloved by his teammates, go undrafted but eventually work his way up to making his NFL debut this February?

Why did Harvard hire an alumnus of Ivy League-rival Princeton to take over the helm of the football program, and what about his make-up could set the team up for continued success?

What role does Harvard football still play in the life of Ben Abercrombie — a Harvard football alum who was paralyzed from the neck down on a kick-off play in 2017?

Apart from football, I was lucky enough to cover another sport with vibrant traditions and a dynamic team personality in Harvard baseball (and lucky enough, as this parting shot went to press, to watch Harvard compete doggedly in the Ivy League Tournament). Talking to George Cooper about his passion for music-making, along with my co-chair Katharine Forst, was one of the most genuine and generative conversations I had with a Harvard athlete. Katharine has a remarkable ability to connect with anyone she speaks to, and interviewing George alongside her reinforced to me that good reporting comes from deep conversations.

As I leave Harvard and the Crimson behind, I’ll always look back fondly on the stories we wrote, the supplements we painstakingly curated, and the 150+ articles we edited as co-chairs. But without a doubt, my proudest accomplishment at 14P is the impact I had on junior writers, compers, and the editors I worked with across the organization. In that final category, I hope (perhaps naively) that Katharine and I swayed some hearts and minds within the organization. That we convinced some CrimEds that well-reported sports writing can teach our readers as much about Harvard — and about life — as any front-page News story.

Regardless, I’m confident now that my catnaps on the basement couch were worth it. That the stories I told were important, and shining a light on the people who drive Harvard athletics forward mattered. My only advice to the next guard of sensational Crimson sportswriters is simple: it’s all about the people.

– Staff Writer Jack Silvers can be reached at jack.silvers@thecrimson.com