Thanks for the Memories

In the past four years, the Harvard sports scene has undergone a facelift. Nothing drastic, mind you, but enough alterations have been made to make today's scene far different from the one I first encountered as a freshman, three and a half years ago. The headline-grabbing sports, football and hockey, have multi-flexed their way into mediocrity the past two years, and every indication points to them staying there for at least a while. Squash hasn't won a national championship in two years, which is like a ten-year drought for anyone else, swimming and baseball are only now beginning their ascent to the top after a couple of off-seasons, while soccer, basketball and lacrosse, none too hot to begin with, are at least breathing some signs of life these days. Indeed, as far as championships are concerned, Harvard is in a slump.

Women's sports, in the meantime, have become a force to be reckoned with, if not yet in terms of titles, at least in terms of the annual athletic budget.

So what, you ask. You're right, so what, because regardless of who's up and who's down in the standings at present, it is doubtful that the future--at least my future--will be filled with recollections of the first-place finishes and the date that women's cross-country achieved Level I status. If you ask me in ten years what place the Crimson gridders finished my sophomore year, I probably won't remember. [O.K., bad example. That was the year they won the title, but do you see my point?] Ask me, though, to recite a few Bill McCurdy quotes, and I'm sure I'll be able to.

Having seen and covered more than my share of Harvard events, I have many memories, but most of them have nothing to do with the actual athletic competition. Following, then are a few of the memories which come quickly to mind, and which probably reveal my feelings about sports far more eloquently than I could do myself.

Everyone knows the ability to drive straight and true is an important prerequisite for any golfer. As the Crimson linksters discovered prior to their opening tri-meet of the spring two years ago, it's even more important than some might think.

It wasn't that the linksters were hooking or slicing their tee shots this fine spring afternoon. Indeed, their clubs never made it out of the back seat of the 1975 Matador that was transporting the foursome of Scott McNeely, Alex Vik, Randy Millen and John Bartlett to the match's scheduled site of New Seabury Country Club on Cape Cod. Instead, it was a shanked brake which caused all of the trouble, a two-car collision outside of a shopping mall in Wareham, Mass., and the assessment of a two-stroke penalty to the Crimson for hitting into an unexpected hazard.

No one was injured in the collision, which, according to Vik, was caused by "an apologetic policeman who was supposed to be directing traffic but who instead directed an accident." The damages to the automobiles, however, were considerably more costly than a package of Titleists. All of which goes to prove that in some cases, it's not how well you get off the tee that counts, but whether or not you get there in the first place.

In the fall of '75, Jim Kubacki rose from the ranks of anonymity to lead Harvard to its first undisputed Ivy League football title. In so doing, the junior from Cleveland set Crimson one-game and season total offense records. While Harvard dipped to third place in the standings the next fall, Kubacki still performed admirably enough to conclude his career as Harvard's all-time passing and total offense leader. As a result of these accomplishments, then, it was only fitting that Kubacki was selected to participate in one of the season's numerous post-season bowl games, right?

Right, sort of. For while Kubacki did indeed participate in last year's American bowl in Tampa, Fla., it was not in his customary role as quarterback. Kubacki did call a few plays from behind center, but for the most part, he spent his all-star afternoon operating from the flanker position.

But here's a funnier thing: he scored the game's winning touchdown. With just seven seconds remaining in the first half and Kubacki's North squad holding a 14-0 advantage, Purdue's Mark Vitali dropped back to pass and guess who he found free in the endzone? Naturally the South stormed back in the second half with three touchdowns, but a missed extra point after the final score produced a final tally of 21-20 in favor of the North. And Jim Kubacki, out of position and all, was the hero...sort of.

Did you ever want to own your own baseball team? Last spring two Harvard sophomores decided they did, so David Campbell and Bruce Shepherd attempted to form a public syndicate to buy the Red Sox. "Own a piece of the Sox," read an ad in the Boston Globe one weekend, and the next, Campbell and Shepherd had their pictures plastered across the sports pages of America, courtesy of the Associated Press, one of whose editors had seen the advertisement.

The rising enterpreneurs sought pledges of $20, and hoped to attract 900,000 buyers to meet the then $18 million asking price of the Yawkey estate. "There are a lot of fanatics around," Campbell explained, "and that is only one dollar from every man, woman and child in New England."

When reality and legal hassles set in, the proposed public syndicate had to be dissolved, but only after Campbell and Shepherd learned a few things not covered in Ec. 10. "We actually are pretty serious," economics major Shepherd said at the time. And why not? The Red Sox still remain unsold today.

The fact that for the last four years Boston University and eastern collegiate hockey supremacy have been synonymous is common knowledge. During that span, the Terriers have not only captured one national, three ECAC and two Beanpot championships, but they have also been victorious in nine of 11 meetings against Harvard as well. Few people realize, however, that one of the major cogs in the B.U. machine these past few years, All-American defenseman and junior co-captain Jack O'Callahan, nearly spent four years on this side of the Charles River.

Following an 8-3 Terrier triumph three Decembers ago at Walter Brown Arena O'Callahan explained the choice of Commonwealth Avenue instead of Soldiers Field Road as the site of his hockey education. "Harvard was trying to sell me on that education stuff," the then first-year defenseman from Charlestown said, "but I wasn't buying. I was looking for the best hockey around, and I guess this proves I found it."

The past three hockey seasons have done little to disprove him. While B.U. has risen to the top and stayed there, Harvard has been wallowing in mediocrity the past two winters, and there's little reason to expect a reversal of these trends in the near future. The Crimson's last stab at the top, in fact, was an ECAC semifinal date with the Terriers in March of '76. Following an 8-4 B.U. cakewalk, O'Callahan capped the evening with another hat trick of a statement: "Harvard's nice, but B.U.'s great." On that night, and in this sport, there was and still is no one to offer a dissenting opinion.

When the Women's Ivy League Swimming and Basketball Championships were contested this winter at Harvard, the athletic competition featured more than just the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Whoever scheduled the tournaments for the second weekend of February, you see, apparently didn't check in with the weatherman beforehand. As a result, coming as they did the weekend after The Storm, the championships also introduced a new element to sporting competition, the torture of traveling.

For openers, Brown, Cornell and Barnard motioned to stay home altogether. They were the smart ones, for the schools that opted to brave Mother Nature got more than they bargained for. "We felt we had to come," said Princeton swim coach Janie Tyler. "It's just that once we did, we had to walk to the Hyatt from Central Square with our luggage because no taxis would pick us up."

Yale and Penn made the journey aboard an Amtrak, on which the teams were locked in a train car the entire trip. As one of the Eli swimmers asked, "Do you know what that's like when you have to go to the bathroom?" And Dartmouth? The Big Green bused southward on the weekend the annual Winter Carnival was being staged in Hanover, an event made even more depressing when, in the words of coach Susan Lutkus, "It took us as long to get from the bus station to the pool as it had from Hanover to Boston." Make that the thrill victory, the agony of defeat and the torture of traveling.

Try this one on for size. Two years ago, the Harvard Classics, then a fledgling basketball squad in search of an identity and not the powerhouse it is today, traveled to the Deer Island Correctional Institute for a game with the local residents. Following the contest, a 74-73 Classics triumph, Adams House inmate Peter Durgerian sat on the visitors' bench blissfully piping a tune on his harmonica.

The referee approached him. "You know," he said, "my son plays good harmonica. He used to have 35 of them, and took them on tours all over the country before they got stolen in some hippie town in Florida."

"You know," Durgerian replied, nodding his head in understanding, "my dad is a pretty good referee." Somebody, obviously, was whistling dixie.

If anything in life is certain, it's death, taxes and the fact that squash players are gentlemen. Two years ago, Jack Barnaby's curtain call as the Crimson's squash and tennis mentor, the Princeton Tigers, undefeated and cocky as hell, invaded Cambridge for their annual squash showdown with Harvard.

On the Friday prior to the match, the Princetonians, who had defeated all of their previous opponents that season by a 9-0 margin, speculated on their chances of performing a similar fete against the Crimson. The latter had fallen two years running to the defending national champs, so one Tiger racquetman thought it only proper, upon arriving at Hemenway Gym, to inquire of his Harvard opponent, "Aren't you scared playing Princeton?" "Oh yeah, terrified," came the reply.

Their cockiness aside, however, the Tigers remained gentlemen. Before the match, what Barnaby described as a "beautiful Tiger blanket" was presented to the retiring Harvard coach in a gesture of appreciation. Barnaby, himself a gentlemen, then proceeded to demonstrate his thanks. Unveiling a team which he claimed "couldn't have carried Princeton's racquets on the court without permission in November," Barnaby sat back and watched a "tremendous win," a 6-3 triumph over the favored Tigers, that allowed Barnaby to retire with the nicest gift of all: national championship number 20 and Ivy League title number 21. Quite gentlemanly of him, wouldn't you say?

In their season-opening tri-meet last fall, the Crimson harriers discovered that the faster team always wins, even when the faster team runs in the wrong direction. It seemed that two miles into the race against the powerful Providence College Friars and the Massachusetts Minutemen, the leaders, most of whom were wearing Friar jerseys, got a bit confused by the course's markings and began running a course of their own design.

"The course wasn't properly lined out," Harvard coach Bill McCurdy said afterwards. "I ran across to a point where I could see the leaders at the three-mile point, and all I saw was three Harvard guys." It's not that McCurdy was disappointed by the sight of three of his runners leading the race, it's just that he knew it was an impossiblity.

Where the Friar harriers traveled was anybody's guess, but when it came to cross the finish line, there were the Providence runners in front, misdirections and all. "It set a historical precedent," McCurdy quipped. "Those guys are so damned good that they ran all the way to Boston, came back, and won anyway. It was sort of a mismatch." You might say that.

In all probability, McCurdy wasn't too suprised by Providence's showing. After all, this was the same Bill McCurdy who once claimed "It might help running an unfamiliar course. When you don't know the course, you don't know you're supposed to get tired." Besides, this wasn't the first time that a McCurdy coached team had fallen to the Friars. On past occasions, McCurdy, always gracious in defeat, had a ready explanation for the Friars' dominance. "They had the Holy Father out there as well as the team," the retired lieutenant colonel of the United States Army Reserve and, by his own admission, "the greatest living coach in any legal sport," claimed after one setback. After another, McCurdy observed that "Providence brings in all those Irish imports so I think our best chance would be an IRA rebellion. It appeals to my devious nature to unite with the IRA. I'd call Kennedy but I don't know whether he'd be sympathetic."

Providence has hardly been McCurdy's lone nemesis these past years. Northeastern and particularly the indefatigable Flora twins, Bob and John, have also proved a pain in the Crimson's respiratory system. McCurdy reserved his choicest comments for them. "You know," he once stated, "I'm a gardener during the summer, and two twins named Flora just put the finishing touches on us." Other well-aimed barbs have included the following: "Something is just not right. I just swear when I see them. Damn their souls. If we had some of that weed spray, I would have sprayed it on them." Knowing Bill McCurdy, he probably would have.