Senior Jon Takamura is one of five senior linebackers who has taken advantage of increased playing time in his final season.

Last November, on a cold Saturday afternoon, a Harvard linebacker stepped up big. With the score 10-0 and less than four minutes remaining in The Game, Yale was threatening on the two-yard line. That is, until Eric Schultz ’09 burst through the line of scrimmage and laid a fumble-forcing sack on Bulldog quarterback Brook Hart, sealing a second straight Ivy title for the Crimson.

With Schultz and classmate Glenn Dorris ’09 getting all the attention—and much of the playing time—on last year’s linebacking corps, many of the then-junior linebackers spent the majority of the season on the sidelines. Only two of those juniors, Conor Murphy and Sean Hayes, recorded a tackle in last year’s game.

“You come in, you’ve just got to change your mentality,” senior Jon Takamura says. “Playing behind Schultz and Dorris...you have to find ways to contribute to the team any way you can. So I sort of thought, you know, I’m at least going to push those guys, try to make myself better.”

But this fall, the seniors’ turn finally arrived, and the class of 2010—Takamura, Murphy, Hayes, Nick Hasselberg, and J.B. Monu—has seized the opportunity.

“I waited three years to be able to play, and it’s hard because you have to keep the big picture in mind,” says Hasselberg, who has started every game this season after appearing in just one contest a year ago. “But when you get your chance—like I have this year—you take it, and you take it in stride, and you do the best you can. And it’s worth the wait.”

Despite losing two of the Ivy League’s best run stoppers, the Harvard defense hasn’t missed a beat, as the quintet of linebackers has stepped up to seamlessly fill the holes.

“The thing that really distinguishes us is that it’s a bunch of kind of no-name guys, and there’s always a little pride taken in that,” says Murphy, who started alongside Schultz and Dorris last season. “Nobody really knows [our] names—everybody’s always following Collin Zych and Carl Ehrlich. But it’s this group of guys that really holds the defense together, making calls, making plays, making tackles.”

Though Murphy has continued to be an important contributor, with 27 tackles and a team-leading five quarterback hurries in eight games, it’s a pair of breakout players—Hayes and Takamura—that has accumulated the most impressive stat lines.

Hayes’ emergence as one of the team’s top linebackers has been a long time coming. He started the first two games of his sophomore season before injuries caused him to take a redshirt season as a junior and see a decrease in action during his first senior season. Now back for his fifth year, Hayes is second on the team with 42 tackles and has started every contest for the Crimson.

“It’s tough at first, because it’s like, ‘Man, what happened?’” Hayes explains. “I was in here, I was the guy, and now I’ve got to sit behind and kind of take a back seat...We know that we’re players, good players, and we never really felt like we were not good enough or anything like that. We knew that this was going to be our year to shine, and I think that up to this point, we’ve moved up and done a real good job.”

Takamura has only started two games this season, but has exhibited a penchant for making big plays when it counts. He’s third on the team with 38 tackles, leads the team with four sacks, and scored Harvard’s only defensive touchdown of the season—a 60-yard interception return at Lehigh in Week 3.

Though the teammates joke about Takamura’s statistical success—“He steals sacks from Hayes,” Hasselberg jests—the Hawaiian is quick to share the credit.

“I would say that a lot of the success that I’ve had is because of the guys around me,” Takamura says. “A lot of the plays I’ve made is because of someone else sacrificing, Hayes or Hass.”

Rounding out the quintet is Monu, whose modest stat line—10 tackles and two QB hurries in nine appearances—is a victory in itself for a player who had never played linebacker when he arrived on campus.

“I never thought I was actually going to see the field at linebacker because I’d never done it in high school,” Monu admits. “I was learning, I was getting better, but I didn’t know I was ever going to be at that point...I said, ‘Well, if I’m never going to see the field at linebacker, well, I’m going to make sure I’m on special teams. That’s what I’m going to do, because I came here to play football.’”

Now, as the five linebackers prepare for their final game together, they know that they won’t be watching the action with the game on the line—they’ll be the ones expected to make that red-zone stop.

“It’s been so great to learn from Hayes, and to see Conor and Tak succeed early in their careers, and to see J.B. finally get his shot and just kill it once he’s been in,” Hasselberg says. “It’s something really special, and I admire these guys in so many ways...Yale’s our last opportunity to play together, and I really believe that it’s going to be a great one.”

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.