No More Black Cats Allowed

When the Harvard football team captured the Ivy League title against Yale in The Game last year, you might have lost all sensation in your toes that afternoon, but you were there.

When the Harvard men's soccer team trounced Adelphi, 3-0, last year at Ohiri Field to advance to the Final Four, you were there.

The 1987 fall season was unforgettable.

This year, however, you try to forget. Try to get it of your head.

Yet all around campus you wander. Friends ask, "What's happening this year?" Your reply: "Who knows?"

You look at the Ivy League football standings. Behind Penn, Cornell, Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth sits Harvard. The defending Ivy League champions are tied with Columbia. You shudder at the thought.

When Soccer America tabbed Harvard as the top team in the nation, you cheered. No more Final Four upsets. This year's Crimson would win the national championship.

But Harvard lost three big regional games (Dartmouth, Connecticut, Hartwick) and tied Boston University. You doubt that the Crimson will receive an NCAA Tournament bid.

You look for answers and find none. Both teams have the talent to win. Both teams know how to win. But why aren't both teams winning?

A jinx. A dark cloud over the Charles River. A crack in the sidewalk somewhere on Mass. Ave. A broken mirror in someone's bathroom. That's the answer.

You glance at the calendar. In less than three weeks, the Harvard hockey team will begin its season. You swear on your battered "Yale Sucks" shirt that you will save the hockey team from the jinx that has invaded Cambridge.

This week's WMEB/CHSB hockey poll reveals some positive signs. Harvard, with an untarnished 0-0 record, is ranked sixth in the nation. Not first but sixth. No pressure for the Crimson to prove that is the best team in the nation.

Olympians Lane MacDonald and Allen Bourbeau have returned from Calgary.

Maybe it won't as bad for the hockey team, you think.

But you still worry. You avoid the mirror in you bathroom. You can't even tell how you look.

"You're hair's all messed up. Don't you ever comb it?"

"No. I'm doing it for the hockey team."

You call up Cambridge City Hall. You demand to talk to the mayor.

"Excuse me, your honor, but I was wondering if you could repave all the sidewalks in Harvard Square by November 11, when Harvard hosts. Yale at Bright Center?"

Click. No luck.

You dash to Store 24. Between the day-old donuts and empty coffee cups, you find a box of rabbit's feet.

"Excuse me, can I have 10 more boxes? It's for the hockey team."

Black cats walk down Mt. Auburn Street and you run the other way. You steal a bunch of ladders from JFK St. and hide them in the basement of the Union, so that no one can walk under them.

You feel relieved, eager for the hockey season to begin. You hope that the jinx moves away from Cambridge and to Cornell, St. Lawrence, Boston College and Michigan State. Stay away from Bright Center this year.

If the Crimson makes the Final Four at Minneapolis this spring, you want to be there. Just like when you were at that frozen Game last November in New Haven.

Is it too much for you to ask?