Grappling With the Burdens of a Dual Life

Greg Gicewicz '89-'90 knew he could not give up football.

The 1988 season was difficult. Harvard finished second to last in the Ivy League standings with a 2-5 record.

But Gicewicz, the team's middle guard, wanted another chance. He knew if he took the spring semester off, he would have another semester of eligibility. He would get to play in the 1989 Crimson campaign.

"I'd been thinking about it throughout the football season," Gicewicz says. "As the year went on, it became automatic that, yes, if there was any way I could continue playing football, I would do that."

"After practice and after games, I said, 'I'm really not ready to give this up yet,'" he says.

He consulted with his parents and coaches and decided after the Harvard-Yale game in late November that he would take the next semester off and return next year to the Crimson line-up.

A week later, Gicewicz's teammates voted him the 1989 Harvard football captain.

Gicewicz, who will graduate in the spring of 1990, is unusual among Harvard athletes because he decided to postone his education in order to continue his athletic career. But his devotion to the game he loves is typical of Harvard athletes.

Still, this devotion must be balanced with an even keener concern--academics. Harvard athletes lead a difficult double life. They have two full-time jobs, one in the classroom and one on the field.

The pressures of being both a student and an athlete can be trying at times, athletes say. Hard practices and long road trips make studying difficult. Likewise, classes occasionally conflict with practices, making it hard to perform at peak level in games, athletes say.

Some Harvard athletes have suffered under the strain of the duel committment to athletics and academics. Overburdened, some athletes voluntarily quit their sports. Others are forced to do so by the Administrative Board, Harvard's chief disciplinary body. But for most athletes at Harvard, the double life is manageable.

Harvard coaches, on the other hand, are faced with the job of winning games at a school which stresses academics. These coaches say the obstacles--juggling practice schedules to fit athletes' academic calendars and long layoffs during exam periods--present difficult but not insurmountable challenges.

The essential problem for athletes is time. Some Harvard athletes spend as many as 50 hours a week on their sports during the season. A football player, for instance, must not only go to practices and games but also attend weight-training sessions and view films of opposing teams.

"I think it's tough in the fall when I practice and I'm on the field 50 hours a week," running back Jim Reidy '90 says. "You go in at 2 [p.m.] and you don't get back home until 9. I'm too exhausted to study. So I try and catch up on the weekends."

"The biggest thing is you plain get tired," soccer Captain Robert Bonnie '89 says. "You come home from practice and want to relax, but you know you need to work. You try to study and you fall asleep."

Athletes with more difficult majors are forced to radically redesign their lives. Social commitments lag behind those to athletics and academics.

"Sometimes it means taking an extra night of studying when everyone's going out," says hockey player Ed Presz '89, a computer science major.

Long road trips force athletes to study under difficult circumstances. It isn't easy reading Plato on a windy bus ride through the hills of upstate New York.

"I take books along on the bus, but it's like taking books during vacation," says Greg Ubert '89, who plays both football and baseball.

Presz has an even harder time on the road. Without a computer, he can't do his programming assignments. "It's tough because when you're on the road, that's the time other C.S. majors are doing their work," Presz says.

Some athletes are determined to make the maximum use of their time. For basketball player Ian Smith '91, life on the road is just like life in the library. "On every road trip I go on, I take my books--definitely," says Smith, a pre-med. "I study on the way there, I study before the game, I study after the game and I study on the way back."

Sometimes athletes must even take midterms on the road--a hotel room serves as a classroom and coaches as procters.

Demands of athletics and academics force athletes to budget their time efficiently. Some athletes even find it easier to fit studies into their schedules during the season.

"I'm not sure that athletics makes it more difficult to study," basketball Co-Captain Mike Gielen '89 says. "Sure, basketball takes a lot of time, but it has also taught me to be more disciplined with my time. I know that in the spring after the season, I'm not as productive with my study time because I don't feel the same urgency to do the work as I do during the season."

Others, particularly those fighting for a starting position, focus their complete attention on the sport. The sport becomes an obsession. "Once you're starting, you want to make sure you don't mess up," Reidy says. "You want to know the plays twice as well as everyone else. You're running even harder in practice because you don't want to make mistakes."

"For myself, when I'm trying to play hockey, I have to be totally focused on it," hockey player C.J. Young '90 says. "And that means sacrificing other things."

Athletes' attempts to meld both athletics and academics are not always recognized by their classmates. Even at Harvard, supposedly an enlighted institution, stereotypes of athletes--like the "dumb jock" label--exist.

"I think there's a conception as seeing the athlete as one-dimensional, as an athlete and nothing else," says Brita Lind '89, who plays both ice hockey and softball.

Ironically, these stereotypes are compounded by another stereotype of Harvard athletes as inferior to athletes at other schools.

Harvard athletes are frustrated by these stereotypes, which add extra pressure to their performances in the classroom and on the field.

"We're in a no-win situation," Maurice Frilot' '89 says. "We're made to feel that we're not smart enough, and when we're playing, people say we're not tough enough to compete."

Instructors are also guilty of perpetuating stereotypes of athletes, athletes say.

"I think that, in general, professors and section leaders kind of carry a grudge," hockey player Ed Krayer '89-'90 says. "They don't go out of their way to shaft an athlete but there is some animosity. They're not pleased when you miss their exam or their section or review."

The burden of balancing academics and athletics has occasionally taken its toll on athletes at Harvard. Richard Knight '90 was in line to become a starter on this year's soccer squad, but decided to sit out the season in order to concentrate on academics.

"In terms of looking at possibilities after college, it was high time to do well academically," Knight says. "The opportunities after college from soccer are virtually non-existent."

Other athletes have had to sit out seasons or parts of seasons because of academic problems. Like other students, athletes occasionally run afoul of the Administrative Board. Students on academic probation cannot participate in extra-curricular activities--including sports--without special permission.

Harvard athletes do not receive extensive support from the Athletic Department. According to Assistant Athletic Director Bob Malekoff, athletes are briefed at the beginning of the year about eligibility requirements. But for the most part, Malekoff says, the Athletic Department deals with athletes through coaches. The Athletic Department is primarily concerned with freshman athletes, Malekoff says.

"We have an orienation meeting with new coaches," Malekoff says. "We talk about the fact that, okay, we have a bunch of freshmen coming here and in addition to making the transition to college life they're playing a sport. That can be terrific because it provides him with an immediate group of people he can be friends with. On the other hand, it can be a negative situation depending on how much pressure that kid puts on himself."

Unlike at most major schools, athletes are not given additional academic resources. Harvard does not provide its athletes with study halls and tutors like at Holy Cross, for instance.

"The philosophy here is that athletes are like any other student," Athletic Director Jack P. Reardon '54 says. "The University resources are the ones that should be used. If someone has a problem they should go to the Bureau of Study Council like everyone else."

For their part, coaches have a dual role. They must win games while at the same time making sure their athletes stay on top of their academic work. And that is not always an easy task. "I'm sure there are guys coaching who say it should be easier to coach at Harvard than at other places," men's basketball coach Peter Roby says.

Unlike at other universities--Ohio State and Texas A&M, for instance--coaches are not always under the gun. Vince Lombardi's motto about winning being the only thing does not grace the walls of the Harvard Athletic Department.

The Athletic Department does not place enormous pressure on coaches to win, says men's soccer Coach Mike Getman. "I don't have the feeling that if I lose tomorrow I'm going to be fired," Getman says.

But coaching at Harvard, in fact, has its own peculiar difficulties. Coaches occasionally have to rearrange practice schedules to accommodate athletes with classes or tests. Or, more often, they have to prepare for games without 100 percent attendance at practice.

"I came here from Indiana [University], where I was an assistant coach," Getman says. "You simply didn't miss practices at Indiana. If you had to change a class or drop a class because it was going to be conflicting with practices, you did that."

"Here, there is usually a senior or two who is working on a thesis or someone who has a lab that he has to be at every Tuesday during practice," Getman said. "It doesn't get in the way. It means that they come out the other days and have perhaps a little bit more intensity."

Sometimes, players miss more than practice. Squash player Jon Bernheimer '90 had to miss a match against Trinity earlier this year because he had tutorial. In Bernheimer's tutorial, only two absenses are permitted. He had already missed one class. "That's the tutorial system, you can't use athletics to abuse the tutorial system," Bernheimer says.

Coaches have to operate within certain limitations. The Athletic Department gives coaches strict guidelines about how many practices may be held a week and how long those practices can be, according to women's basketball Coach Kathy Delaney Smith. Also, coaches cannot hold mandatory practices during exam periods.

Even with these restrictions, teams at Harvard are able to compete successfully with teams free of rigid academic requirements. Harvard's women's teams in particular are able to give teams outside the Ivy League a solid test, according to Delaney Smith.

"Women's sports are definitely different than men's sports, as far as the difference between the top 20 teams nationally and teams in the Ivy League," Delaney Smith says. "In a given game, I would say it is more likely for a women's team to upset a team from the top 20."

Exceptions to Delaney Smith's observation do, of course, exist. The men's hockey team is currently the top-ranked team in the nation. Harvard's crew teams have always been among the best in the country.

Harvard's success in these programs is due to locale (hockey and crew are traditionally New England sports) and the reputations of their coaches (hockey Coach Bill Cleary '56 and crew Coach Harry Parker are legends).

Athletes find coaches' efforts to accomodate them helpful.

"The coaches are concerned with the best interests of the team," swimmer Ken Johnson '90 says. "They realize some guys do want to compete on the national level, some guys just want to improve themselves and others just want to do something besides academics and be part of the team."

Finally, athletes provide their own support groups. According to Gielen, upperclassmen on the basketball team regularly offer advice and encouragment to the younger players. And Beth Chandler '89, co-captain of the women's hoop squad, says several of the science concentrators on the team get together twice a week to study.

For most Harvard athletes, sports is an education in its own right. Sports "can teach you as many things as you can learn in the classroom," says basketball player Fred Schernecker'88-'89.

While sports provides a discipline applicable in other areas of life, some Harvard athletes have visions of playing professional sports. Frilot says he hopes to play in the National Football League next year.

Most Harvard athletes, however, are resigned to a life outside of athletics after graduation.

"Sports ain't--and I stress ain't--going to get you into law school," rugby player Annor Ackah '89 says. "There's only so far you can go unless you're going to go pro. And this is not the place to go if that's what you want."

Reported and written by Mark Brazaitis, Casey J. Lartigue Jr., Michael J. Lartigue, Jennifer M. Frey, Julio Varela, Michael D. Stankiewicz, Christine Dimino and Mia Kang.