Novel College Croquet Tournament Begins

LENOX, Mass.--The first-ever national collegiate croquet tournament held north of Florida, organized by a research fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics, began yesterday in this tiny town in western Massachusetts.

The players, who are students at a dozen schools, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Massachusetts, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley, yesterday braved the elements for the first of three days at Lenox's Blantyre Inn and Lenox Club.

The National Collegiate Championship in croquet was organized by IOP Research Fellow Xandra Kayden under the auspices of the American Croquet Association, an upstart challenger of the older U.S. Croquet Association.

"If she wasn't around, college croquet wouldn't be," said Steven Sprague, who played for Cornell University until he graduated last year, about Kayden.

Kayden created the New England Collegiate Croquet Association, the only such regional group in the country, two years ago. She said she moved the national championship match north for the first time in the tournament's short history because Southern schools, with their year-round sunshine, always held the advantage over their snowbound counterparts.

Her newsletter to players earlier this month advised: "The outfit of the Compleat Croquet Player includes longjohns, rain gear, mittens, [and] warm boots."

The singles matches will be played according to rules devised by the U.S. Croquet Association, and the doubles matches will be played according to international rules.

American rules, Ms. Kayden explained, are akin to the rules of backyard croquet. When one ball is hit by another, it is "dead" and can't be hit again until the attacker goes through a wicket. Under international rules, balls are always open to attack.

Young contenders say they like the game's mental challenge. "It's like a pool and chess game on grass," said David Wong of Brown University.

"I think people first join for the novelty of it. Everybody remembers childhood experiences of playing croquet in the backyard, but the professional game is a lot more intricate," he said.

The object of the game is to shepherd two balls twice around a wicketed turf. Rather than hit opponents' balls into the woods, as in backyard croquet, players hit them to get an extra turn.

The nation's first college croquet court will open next spring at Smith College.