Michael Smith Finds A Home

"I'll 'ave spam, spam, spam, bacon, spam and spam..."

Monty Python cackles on the tube and Michael Smith from Leicester, England cracks up as he takes in his nightly dose of British humor (or humour as they say over there) like an addict in a methadone clinic. No one else in the room gets the joke.

Smith, without a doubt the most alented soccer player at Harvard in the last four years, had to adapt to a number of changes since coming to the States last fall on something of an impulse. But he has not lost his British sense of humor and not much seems to faze him.

For instance, Harvard only informed him at the end of August before his freshman year that he was accepted. Of course, he had only applied after his high school graduation that summer, intending to spend just a year in the States. Harvard said four years or nothing so he went for broke.

"I had two weeks to get ready, so I came," Smith explains. And he does not regret it. He feels that the well-rounded American liberal arts education is much better than the specialized English university education, where one only takes courses in one's concentration.

On the soccer "pitch" he is in his element, having played the sport since grade school. By the time he was 15, Smith was playing up to 100 games a season and he made the last 22 of the British junior national team in his senior year. But, even there, Smith had to adapt. "It's certainly the first time, at the school level, that I've been on a losing team," he says. "In a few games it's hurt my game. Sometimes it seems it's been a struggle."

He says it would be nice to have another English player on the team to complement his playing style. He has done well for himself at midfield, though, using his head for the game to choreograph the Harvard attack, which has become much more controlled this season.

Smith has dominated midfield in most of the games Harvard has played this season, using his speed to start offensive thrusts and sending deft passes to the wings to spread out opponents' defenses.

The team has had its problems scoring, and Smith accepts part of the blame. "I have to be more offensively minded. I can't just be satisfied with controlling midfield."

Still, he's generally happy with the season. He feels he's played mostly good games and that the team has learned a lot which will be put to use next year. "It's a matter of converting our control of the game into winning."

Smith simply enjoys soccer too much to be down about a season. He explains that in England the "schools do not emphasize sports." There are no varsity letters and no recruiting, so the pressure is not as great. "Soccer is done very much for the players. You don't get mass support."

So soccer represents a personal challenge for Smith. "I always want to play as high a level of soccer as I can. It's been important to me. It's been one of my main achievements through school."

But, he adds, "I don't think it would mean enough that I'd want to play pro. I don't think I would enjoy it." Soccer above all remains a game not to be taken too seriously. Smith says that the money pressure in the pros would be too great, that a few bad games or an injury could finish you. "Pro sports in America are so overcommercialized...and also I'd have to play on Astroturf."

Smith has had to alter his impressions of Harvard also. "After high school, the only thing I knew of Harvard was through Love Story," he says. Now that is humorous (humourous).