Captain, Captain

At last year's spring banquet, alpine captain Bob Kelley announced to the ski team that he was passing on a ball and chain to his successor, Tim Hofer. Being captain of an athletic squad at Harvard is considered an honor in any sport and skiing is no exception, but heading the ski team carries more responsibility to teammates and more headaches than the captainship of any other squad.

The functions of the skiing captains are threefold, largely due to the absence of a full-time coach or manager. Fundraising, an enormous responsibility given the costs of transporting the team and recent cuts in its budget, involves sending letters to the 400 to 450 former members of the ski team and to the parents of current skiers. "These alumni aren't rich for the most part," Hofer said this week. "A lot of them came to Harvard from New Hampshire and Vermont and they won't make a lot of money if they go back there to live. Also, if they played other sports while they were here, it's difficult to compete with that, especially now with plans for a $250 million fund drive."

The captain's second major duty is managing the budget. "We decide when, where and how to spend the budget," Hofer says, adding "We're probably more involved with this than any other team."

"Tim has really been running the show," nordic captain David Rand says. "He's done a lot, especially on administration and fundraising."

The third aspect of the captain's job is to manage the team, which includes recruiting, organizing transportation every weekend, and a good deal of coaching. "The organization is a big job, especially in the fall," said women's alpine captain Vera Fajtova. "The point of the program is to have as many people as possible participate, so we call up a lot of people in the freshman class every year."

"Organizing transportation has to be the worst job in the world," Hofer said. "We're constrained by our budget, which doesn't allow us to have a van of our own."

"You get tired of answering questions," Rand said. "It's like waking up in the morning and having 15 people ask you what pair of socks to use."

Fajtova, a junior, feels a big responsibility to take up some of the coaching duties for the inexperienced squad. "A lot of times I have to go over a course with them when I'm trying to get psyched for my race. I don't mind doing it, but it's just another responsibility," she says.

So why would otherwise sane people want to take on this responsibility? "When you're down here, it's hard to motivate yourself to get out of here," Hofer says. "There's no coach to tell you what to do, when to train. You've got to do it because you have a sense of what you need, but it's not as easy as just going down to the field house every afternoon. But when you get to these carnivals, suddenly it's all gone. Suddenly you're really relaxed and all you have to think about is skiing and being with these people who are all your friends."

For Rand, becoming a captain was the direct result of having switched from alpine racing to the nordic events during his freshman year. He raced slalom, giant slalom and some cross-country through his high school years at Lincoln-Sudbury and a post-graduate year at Northfield Mount Hermon.

Nobody's Fool

Rand's improvement as a jumper has been steady since then, and this year he took second place in the nordic combined event at three carnivals. "I enjoyed jumping because every time I jumped I improved since I was starting from zero," he explains. "When I was a junior. I started thinking about becoming the captain, and I realized that I wanted to. Even when I was in high school, I thought about skiing for Harvard. It means a lot to me. Skiing means a lot to me."

Fajtova is now finishing her second year as captain and will continue on for a third during her senior year. "I became captain by default," she said. "I was the obvious choice because I was the only one at the end of my freshman year that seemed committed enough to skiing."

Fajtova sees her job as crucial this spring as the AIAW debates whether to cut Division I down to nine teams, a move that would bump the Crimson women down to Division II. "We'll lobby all of the coaches who will be voting on it this spring at Middlebury," Fajtova says.

For Hofer, a product of Andover, whose skiing experience has included weekend skiing since the age of four and four summers of racing camp at the Red Lodge. Montana glacier, the ski team fills something of a gap. "In most things you do at Harvard, there isn't a sense of common purpose," he says. "On the ski team, you eat, sleep and train with these people. You live with them during the winter. There is a real sense of community on the team. The people are the finest in the world. I can't begin to say how much I've learned about myself and others, not to mention what I've learned about administrative responsibilities. We may be last in Division I, but that means we're the tenth team in the east and I'm proud of that."

Both Fajtova and Rand echo Hofer's sentiments in this regard, indicating that while a ball and chain may be heavy to carry around--it feels good to set it down.