Playing By Invisible Rules

Unlike life--a game of chaos--the world of athletics is well-defined. There are rule books and referees. Plays are either legal or illegal, good or bad. There is no middle ground in sports. No gray areas.

In sports, there are boundaries. Play within the boundaries, within the rules, and you are fine. Step outside them and you will be penalized.

Bill Stanley, the Harvard tennis co-captain and number three seed, played within the rules of his sport. He played hard and well and earned a slew of honors.

But before the Harvard-Penn match Saturday, Stanley was removed from the Crimson roster by Coach Dave Fish. Stanley's three-and-a-half-year career had come to an abrupt end.

While on the court, Stanley didn't break any of his sport's written rules. But, according to Fish, he did break some of the unwritten rules of conduct for his sport.

Fish refused to specify exactly what Stanley did--apparently a series of incidents contributed to Stanley's ouster--but it was clear something was wrong and it was affecting the team, Fish said.

"In terms of our team and what we were trying to accomplish, we just couldn't come to agreement," Fish said. "I was sorry to see it get to that point."

"The only thing to say is that Bill is a very nice person," Fish added. "He has a temper that he can't control on the court. The team understands how they're expected to be."

Each sport comes equipped with a written and unwritten rule book. Some of the unwritten rules may include wearing a coat and tie on the road or playing cleanly and not swearing on the field. Sometimes athletes are informed of the unwritten rules at the beginning of the season. But more often they're expected to know them.

"We always want to be a class act because we're representing Harvard," Crimson hockey player Tim Barakett said. "It's an implied code of ethics. It's understood from the onset--freshmen learn it from the upperclassmen."

"It comes from inside yourself," said field hockey and softball co-captain Gia Barresi, who once had to sit out half of a field hockey game for wearing jeans on the team bus. "Sportsmanship is a big part of it. It's not really dictated to you from the coach. It comes from inside."

"My own circumstance was purely a misunderstanding," Barresi added. "Even though I didn't do it on purpose, I had a bad feeling about going against the unwritten rule."

In tennis, there is a net and white lines to define the boundaries of the game. There are rules: four points to a game, six games to a set, two or three sets for a match.

Bill Stanley knew the stated boundaries and rules of his sport well. He and his coach apparently couldn't agree on what some of the invisible rules were.