Bad Judgement

Everyone remembers a time in childhood when, while quietly playing in the school sandbox all of your friends started to throw sand at one another.

As you beat a hasty retreat, Mrs. Eliot nailed you and sent you inside as an example to all your classmates.

What was more galling than the fact that you were being wrongly accused and more irritating than the public humiliation of your arrest was the realization, as you stood all alone with your face pressed against the window, that you were just a victim of circumstance.

Janet Judge is a victim of far more serious circumstance.

When you got caught for throwing sand, the consequences were transitory: Mrs. Eliot didn't hold your violation against you for very long, and you were free to return to the sandbox the next day.

When the NCAA ruled last Friday that Harvard women's soccer captain Janet Judge had used up her eligibility by traveling with her team to Europe last summer, the decision was permanent.

She will never be able to play collegiate soccer again because she committed a technical violation of an obscure NCAA bylaw--she went on the trip after taking off a semester and before reenrolling at Harvard.

Judge didn't do anything to deserve her fate, but now she has to come to grips with the fact that she has no more avenues of recourse and that she'll spend the rest of the soccer season on the sidelines.

I don't really know Judge. I have never seen her play soocer, and I talked to her for the first time a couple of nights ago when I called to ask her to comment on the NCAA's decision.

But even in the course of a conversation that couldn't have lasted five minutes, I gained a great measure of respect for her.

When Mrs. Eliot threw me out of the sandbox, I was bitter for weeks.

Judge's attitude towards her fate is admirable, even stoic. She is upset, thinks the rule was unfair as it applies to her, but blames no one. She didn't talk about the injuries that have plagued her career, she didn't complain at all.

Harvard Director of Athletics John P. Reardon Jr. '60 is responsible for monitoring the eligibility of all varsity athletes. Judge, upon examining the NCAA handbook, absolved Reardon and all of the athletic administration of any responsibility, citing the absolute obscurity of the by law.

As we were talking she said that now she was trying out for the basketball team (her eligibility for that sport remains unaffected), and as I began to thank her for being so gracious, she started to tell me how enthusiastic she was about the soccer team for which she could no longer play.

The teams with a freshman phenom in goal who has allowed only five goals in 13 games, is ranked near the top in the country and is headed for the national tournament.

A national championship is certainly not out of the question, but Judge is not complaining that she can't really share in it. She chooses, instead, to praise the skills and attitude of the new goalie and to show up at practice and help her replacement develop, and to jump in the net while the rookie rests.

Janet Judge's outstanding soccer career for the Crimson came to a pathetic close this week. She deserves better.

The NCAA had to rule as it did rather than set a precedent that would damage it in later cases. There are hundreds of colleges out there looking for such loopholes to exploit, and in the case of big-time college basketball and football, the financial stakes have become so enormous that the strict enforcement of such rules seems necessary.

What you can blame the NCAA for is its treatment of Judge's case. The national governing board of college athletics took almost a month to rule on her petition, leaving her dangling without any clue as to her ultimate fate.

If Judge had been a male football or basketball player, the ruling wouldn't have taken so long. You can be sure of that.

The Judge case forces reflection on the role of college athletics. Have things gotten out of control, if we need huge rulebooks that are designed to prevent colleges from cheating on one another?

What room is left for just having fun on the playing field?

And is there no room left in the NCAA for a collegiate soccer player who unwittingly broke a rule so trivial neither her coaches nor administrators knew of it?

I guess the NCAA's idea of fun these days is counting the T.V. dollars from its huge basketball and football contracts.

And I guess that's why they no longer play football in sandboxes.