Athletic Sweatshirts: Sweating it Out for Fashion's Sake

They're not just for Kirkland anymore.

You can find them in the ITT weightroom, dining halls across campus, the Science Center lecture halls, or any library.

They're Harvard athletic department sweatshirts, with "Radcliffe 86" or "D(epartment of) H(arvard) A(thletics)" emblazoned across the front in crimson lettering. And some people will go to great lengths to get them.

Gray and crimson may not be this spring's colors according to Vogue, but for the average student, sweats by Harvard are all that's needed to evoke that athletic image. Of course, there are those who legitimately sport the look, and they will do anything to hold onto it.

A staple for all varsity athletes, sweatsuits serve as practice uniforms--the more practical side of this fashionable status symbol.

"In the fall, we get Radcliffe and Harvard sweatshirts, about 400 dozen per year," says Assistant Equipment Manager Artie Clifford. "When we do inventory after everyone goes home for the summer, we're lucky if we have one dozen left. Only the bottoms come back, because there's nothing written on them."

Three hundred ninety-nine swiped for every one returned--not the most efficient ratio imaginable.

In theory at least, the sweatshirts are loaned, not given to the athletes. With every sweat item comes a notice which reads, in part: "Equipment charged out to a student by the Department of Athletics which has not been returned for credit within seven days after the end of the sport season for which it was issued... will be charged to the student on his next term bill."

Thou Shalt Not Covet

But the $30 fee per suit notwithstanding, the allure of the gray-and-crimson often conquers a student's moral standards.

Barbarann Keffer '88, who works part-time at the Dillon Field House laundry room, says, "Some virtuous people will return them. But usually people come in and say they've lost them, or [the sweatshirts] got stolen. That's the good one--when they're trying to steal a [warmup] themselves, they say they got stolen."

There's a distinction to be made, however, between outright burglary and, well, sharing.

"I give them away to girls," says James W. Umlas '86, who runs track. "They love'em."

But while a little trading between friends never hurt anyone, certain students have become victims of serious crime in dorm laundry rooms.

"I just put mine in with all my other laundry, and when I came back, all my clothes were sitting on top of the dryer. But my big sweatshirt was gone," football manager and Greenough resident Mary E. Reyes '89 says. Four other athletic sweatshirts have been stolen from the Greenough laundry room this year.

Not all athletic wanna-bees stoop so low as to break the law, though. A far simpler path to fashion coolness draws the aspirant directly to Dillon.

"We probably hear as many stories as teachers hear about why [students] can't do their homework--you know, the dog ate it," says Clifford.

The assistant manager recalled one girl who after attempting gentle persuasion, finally seduced a student worker into stripping the sweatshirt off his own back.

"All the girls use their charm trying to weasel one out of you," undergraduate worker Daniel J. Sheehan '87 says. "It works."

In an interesting twist, however, those students who presume to wear their athletic attire after dropping a sport, run the risk of social stigma, not universal adulation.

Tracey M. Roberts '88, who coxed crew for several weeks last year, says she has gotten flak for keeping the sweatshirt as part of her wardrobe.

"One time I was accosted by [a neighbor], and he went on this moralizing rampage about how this shirt means something to people who have it," Roberts says. "Well, I don't care, I don't have this particular kind of attachment. It's tough cookies. To me, it doesn't have that kind of connotation. You get much more out of a sport than being able to wear a shirt."

Those who persist in wearing the chronically large cotton blends, however, often find themselves facing a different type of problem altogether--the dwarfing syndrome.

Although the sweatshirts theoretically range in size from small to extra-large, a shirt that terminates above mid-thigh is a rare find.

"I'll just say, I'm 6-8, and it's too big for me," men's basketball center William A. Mohler '88 says.

"My whole family fits in this," Umlas says. "I guess the idea is, if they're good enough for [former Harvard football tackle] Roger Caron, they're good enough for everyone."

"One is good enough for everyone," interjects his fellow trackster Brendan F. Callaghan '87. "They're also good for gloves," he adds, pulling the sleeves over his fists.

Paul M. Kent '87, another track team member,insists, "I feel very strongly about maintainingthe extra-large style, because I'm a small guy andI like to feel bigger."

Whether treasured for their comfy if cavernousfit, or simply for the elite status they carry,Harvard athletic sweatshirts are an omnipresentfeature of undergraduate dress.

Perhaps the final word on the sensation,however, comes from Patricia Bridge, a sophomoreat Boston University who monitors Blodgett Pool.

"I would hate to be the person who puts thelittle maroon stamps on them," Bridge says. "Canyou imagine putting on stamps for thesepromiscuous little Harvard twits who run aroundwith the ball all day and get paid for it,practically?"

Not really.

Good thing we only have to wear them