Managers: Part II Playing the Hotel Game

(This is the second article in a four-part series on Harvard's athletic managers.)

For the average person hotels, planes, and buses carry with them images of travel, vacations and relaxation, but for a manager the main connotation is planning, which means only one thing-work.

For every hour he spends out on the practice field, court or rink, a manager is required to spend at least two hours arranging and securing transportation. meals, and accommodations for every away encounter of the season.

He arranges all the travel from the time the team leaves Dillon Fieldhouse until the time it returns to Quincy Square. Most managers like to think that their successful planning of a trip has a measurable effect on the team's success the next day. One of the major aspects of the planning is finding a place for the team to stay.

Fans always wonder about the hotels where teams stay on a trip. Are they cut-rate dumps patronized because of an ailing athletic fund? Or are they respectable establishments? Or better yet does Harvard, being Harvard, treat its teams to the most elegant accommodations possible, with a chandelier, color TV and ice water in each room?

Most of the managers think that their accommodations are usually excellent. "Most of the places where they put us up are pretty good." soccer's Walt Tomford said. "They're not gonna put you up in a hole in the wall, because usually on a trip away you have some big-wigs along and they're not gonna spend their time in some lousy place."

Hangers-On

"On this year's [football] trip to Princeton we had everybody but a couple of the secretaries in the Department of Athletics, some people from the admissions department, and a few Faculty representatives come along," one manager explained. "We had a pretty good group travel down there with us."

"And they all stayed with you in the hotel?"

"Of course, there are always hangers on who travel with us," the manager replied.

The mention of hotels led to wild tales of past trips. One of the most recent involved a one-night affair during Christmas vacation pitting the wits of New York's Penn Garden Hotel against the brawn of one medium-sized Harvard team, with supporting roles played by various members of the Bowdoin and Yale squads.

Needless to say, the Penn Garden came out a loser. It all started after Harvard won a close critical contest to nab a championship.

As the victorious warriors returned and entered the hotel they were perhaps the last people to see the Penn Garden as it once was. "When you spend the night away after a contest. as I've had the misfortune to do twice, it can really get out of hand and the manager is responsible for seeing that the place isn't leveled," a veteran pointed out.

"Unfortunately, in the midst of the celebrating that night we did rather destroy the hotel. I spent the better part of the night running around trying to keep the hotel in one piece, putting exit signs back on the wall, returning Coke machines to their normal upright position, and getting players back to their rooms." the manager added.

Christmas Fun

Since this episode took place before Christmas, the main lobby of the hotel featured a huge, beautifully decorated tree surrounded by numerous presents, which completely captivated the team.

After the match, but during the game of musical rooms upstairs, three or four players were seen inspecting the various wrapped gifts. Later that night, the troupe was observed playing underneath the tree with several empty boxes in a mound of crinkled paper.

Another Christmas tree was kidnapped by a player from its home outside a Fifth Avenue store. The new owner proceeded to haul it back to the Penn Garden and transplant it between the springs of his bed. This monument was reportedly a rallying spot for celebrants throughout the night.

However, the managers claim in Harvard's defense that Yale and Bowdoin were also going crazy and were celebrating on the eighth and twelfth floors respectively.

This prompted the question, did the managers feel any duty to check on players after they were supposed to be in bed to make sure nobody was flying around the town? All the managers agreed that no Harvard coach would demand this. But they did say that in most cases the managers pick motels which are strategically located outside the center of the city, where the possibilities of a night on the town are somewhat limited.

Coaches Help Out

"One thing with track is that when you stay at a Holiday Inn that's fifty miles outside the city. the only thing around is the bar, and McCurdy and Stowell are usually in there," Dan Pagnano revealed. "So, anybody who comes in notices McCurdy's stern little face and just turns around and runs right back up to his room. This helps us to control them a little." Pagnano said.

However, it was pointed out that you can't always count on the coach coming through even for the manager. Three years ago, the track team went to the Indoor Heptagonals at Cornell with a squad that really wasn't supposed to do well.

But Harvard won to break a two-year Army string and everyone decided that the thing to do was to go back to the Holiday Inn and celebrate. So the manager called ahead and informed the motel that it should put out all the champagne in the house.

As things turned out, the squad went through all the champagne and after that all the rose from the cellar before the chartered plane left. The bill came to $280. The president of the Friends of Harvard Track was present and offered to foot the bill, but McCurdy refused, saying that it was about time some people learned a lesson. So McCurdy got the bill, figured it per head and charged everyone for his share. This seven-dollar liquor bill eventually appeared on the June 1968 term bill as miscellaneous athletic fees.

(Friday-Part III: A Managerial Paranoia-The Unexpected.)