Thomas Looks For NCAA Revenge

After being sidelined for nearly half the season with a leg injury, Harvard soccer captain Charlie Thomas has come up with four goals and five assists in the last five games, and it is no coincidence that the team is playing its best soccer of the season.

"We are definitely on the way up," Thomas said after Monday's 3-0 victory over Brown. "There is much more flow to our style, and we will be playing tougher teams from now on, which will force us to pass and depend on teamwork."

A soccer team cannot develop good teamwork and finesse until it has been playing together for awhile, and Thomas feels that this is even more true of Harvard's team which has so many foreign players.

"Playing soccer in the United States calls for a big adjustment," Thomas, who played center forward for the Gambian national team before coming to Harvard, said. "My style was different from the players around me, and I had to completely disarm myself in order to fit in with them."

"Felix Adedeji has been having the same problem this year. When you have played against Pele and some of the best teams in the world, it's hard to adapt to an American college team. But Felix is making the adjustment now, and in the past two games he has helped us a great deal with his teamwork," Thomas said.

Thomas started playing soccer in Gambia when he was five, and because he was one of the smallest in the pick-up games, his first position was goalie. As he got bigger he moved to fullback and then halfback, and he didn't become a regular lineman until he was fifteen, when the Augustinian Soccer Club, the champions of the first division amateur league, decided that they needed another forward.

"In Gambia the fans are not nearly as interested with scoring as they are here in America. They are much more appreciative of a defensive play or the pass at midfield which sets up a goal. I adopted the role of scorer, but as far as the fans were concerned, by the time I got the ball, the play was already a finished product," Thomas said.

His talents did not go unappareciated, however, and at sixteen Thomas moved up to the national team where he played mostly at center forward and outside left. He averaged a goal per game in nearly a dozen international matches.

Operation Overload

This year Harvard's forward line has been working on what Thomas calls an "overload" system. The play begins when the ball is passed up from the fullbacks. The ball carrier, usually Phil Kydes, will move to one side of the field, and Thomas, who is thirty or forty yards upfield, will break in the same direction.

The result is an overload of three of the four forwards plus the two linkmen on one side of the field. A triangle is formed between the three forwards with Kydes as the trailer, and if he gets in trouble he can pass off to one of the linkmen.

"This overload provides the ball carrier with confidence. There are many passing opportunities and he knows that he will get plenty of help advancing the ball," Thomas said.

The principle aim of the overload system is to isolate the other wing on the far side of the field. A long pass will leave him with only one or at the most two men to beat. The effectiveness of this system is proved by the fact that Harvard's two wings. Adedeji and Papagianis, finished first and second in the Ivy League scoring race.

Thomas won the Ivy League scoring title last year, but this season he has been primarily a playmaker. "When I get the ball in the center I usually have my back to the goal and two fullbacks on me, so my job is to deflect the ball out to the wings," he said.

Thomas feels that the Harvard community is generally unappreciative of the dilemma which confronts the athlete. "It's very disintegrating to dedicate yourself to a sport and still follow four courses at the same time. It's hard to find the right pace," he said.

Thomas has given up his interest in acting here at Harvard because it conflicted with soccer, but he is applying to drama school in addition to law schools in England. His ambition is to go into the Gambian foreign service.

As captain Thomas has reversed the tense atmosphere that plagued the team last year. His sense of dignity and gentle sense of humor keeps his teammates loose during practice and in games, and his interest in what they are doing and thinking about off the field has kept the team unified.

Bone-picking Year

"This is a bone-picking year for me." Thomas said, "I have a bone to pick with St. Louis for beating us two years ago with a goal in the last three minutes, and with Hartwick for beating us in the mud last year, 4-3, and with Penn for beating us on their hard surface field."

Thomas has already been denied the opportunity for revenge against Penn, but that should make him and the rest of the team all the more hungry for the rematches against Hartwick and St. Louis.