Jim Stoeckel Is Thriving on Adversities

Two months ago Jim Stoeckel would have thought little of his chances to be Harvard's starting quarterback. With both Rod Foster and Eric Crone returning, the sophomore from Miami, Florida did not figure on much playing time.

But injuries to Crone, and then to Foster, propelled Stoeckel into the starting line-up for Dartmouth, and he responded with a stellar passing performance. Completing 20 of 37 pass attempts, he broke a long standing Harvard record for most pass completions in one game, and fell only a few yards short of the mark for most passing yardage. Judging from his performance in that game, and last week at Penn. Stoeckel has a good chance of starting the remainder of the season.

Normally one could almost be sure that Stoeckel had earned the starting job, but this year Coach Joe Restic has instituted a policy of not naming the starting quarterback until the day of the game. Stoeckel enjoys the system: "It causes more fierce competition during the week, less complacency, and makes for a better team."

Stoeckel seems to thrive on adversity. After leading his county in passing in his junior year in high school, he suffered a broken collarbone a week before the start of his senior season, and missed the whole year. After a good, though unspectacular freshman year, he came to school this year already behind Crone and Foster. "I knew I would have to start at the bottom, being only a sophomore behind two juniors. I wanted to play, but it didn't seem that I was going to start," he said.

But two minutes before the Dartmouth game, Coach Joe Restic decided to start Stoeckel after watching Rod Foster throw in the pre-game warm up. "Coach Restic wanted to see how Rod's shoulder was, and he only told me I was playing when the team came back onto the field right before the game."

When asked what he thought about the level of competition in the Ivy League, which critics use in dismissing the performance of Ed Marinaro, Stoeckel said that he thought it is "good as there is". He sees the teams as being very balanced, and while the overall depth in the league may not be as great as in some of the other football conferences, the teams "produce a lot of guys who could play anywhere."

"There isn't the same kind of do or die thing in the Ivy League that one finds in other conferences around the country." Stoeckel noted, and the players play because they "love the game". "The pressure is the same, though, big school or small," he noted. "One couldn't find a more pressure-wrought game than the Harvard-Dartmouth game," he concluded.

When discussing the season, Stoeckel termed it "very successful." "I think people were expecting too much," he said. "Coach Restic was supposed to come in, and install a magical offense, but it took time." Whereas observers felt that the players would adapt to a new system faster just because they were from Harvard, "probably just the reverse occurred," Stoeckel noted. "Because we aren't a football factory, and aren't all on football scholarships we don't spend as much time on football, and it took us longer to adapt to the new system."

Notwithstanding. Stoeckel thinks Joe Restic has "done a great job." "We could have easily been 6-0 instead of 3-3," he said. "Phases of our offense have been getting better each week, and last week things finally fit together. The line has been giving me great protection, and if you have protection you should theoretically be able to complete every pass."

Concerning the game against Princeton today, Stoeckel has praise for their defense, and he thinks that they are, at the moment, "the hottest team in the Ivy League." "It should be one of the toughest, if not the toughest, game as far," he added.