Backfield Brotherhood

When meeting Harvard on the gridiron last year, Ivy League defenses didn’t have much room for error on the ground. If it wasn’t a shifty tailback eluding tackles, it was a powerful one cutting right through the defense.

The tandem of senior Gino Gordon and sophomore Treavor Scales tore up the Ivy League last season, spearheading the conference’s best rushing offense to an average 178.7 yards per game.

And this season, they’re back for more.

“I can see it in Treavor, that we both have a very competitive drive,” Gordon says. “The moment we got here, we expected to have some type of playing time and compete and do whatever we can to help the team.”

Both Gordon, who hails from southern California, and Scales, who lives outside Atlanta, switched to football from basketball at an early age and were hooked.

“I was running down the [basketball] court, and this kid was in the lane,” Scales recalls of his nine-year-old self. “I went for a layup, and the kid didn’t move, so I went right through him to the goal. From the stands, his mother yelled at me, ‘This is basketball, not football!’ And I went home that day and told my mom I wanted to play football.”

That penchant for running through the opposition hasn’t lessened for Scales, who came to Harvard after a standout career at Dunwoody High School. A two-time captain of his high school team, Scales racked up 23 touchdowns in his senior season on his way to becoming just the third 1,000-yard rusher in Dunwoody history.

“Before I came up here, the coaches back home in Atlanta for me, they were the ones constantly pushing me and saying, ‘You know, you can go up there, you can make an impact as soon as you step on campus,’” he says. “That’s just a mindset you have to have.”

Scales gained an average of 53.9 yards per game while scoring five touchdowns in his first season in Cambridge—numbers good enough to earn him Ivy Rookie of the Year honors. His best individual performance came in a 42-21 win over Dartmouth, when he ran for 120 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

“I take a couple of pages out of his playbook every once in a while, as far as his jump cuts,” Gordon says of his teammate. “He’s a very explosive player, and a lot of times I try to emulate my running style a little bit to him.”

With a season of experience already under Scales’ belt, Crimson coach Tim Murphy is expecting an even better season out of his young tailback.

“There’s a certain degree of confidence that you develop when you’ve had a successful freshman year at this level,” he says. “You’re a better player if you can be a confident player. Beyond that, he knows the system. He should be a more effective player just by virtue of understanding the system, being farther along, hopefully being just a little physically better as a sophomore.”

But while Scales is a rising star, he still won’t be the headliner for Harvard. That honor belongs to Gordon, who was a first-team All-Ivy selection a year ago. The senior proved to be a triple threat for the Crimson, acting as the team’s leading rusher (averaging 70.2 yards per game with eight touchdowns), second-leading receiver (23 total receptions), and a key blocker when the ball wasn’t in his hands.

“The thing about Gino is he’s such a complete player,” Murphy says. “But beyond that, he’s a real leader. He’s a guy that has such a great work ethic, he’s a guy that’s such an intense, tough kid. He’s a guy who is not afraid to hold his teammates accountable, and people really respect him for that—coaches and players.”

For the second year in a row, Gordon played a crucial role in securing a win in The Game. As a sophomore, the Californian had a career-high 168 yards in a 10-0 victory over Yale, scoring the only touchdown of the game on a freezing, windy afternoon that he calls one of his favorite in a Harvard uniform.

Last year, it was a spin move to escape a tackle on a 4th-and-four play in the fourth quarter that proved the catalyst for the Crimson’s 14-10 comeback win.

In his senior season, Gordon’s expected to continue to spark the offense on the field. But more lasting will be the contribution he’s made to the development of Scales and the squad’s third running back, sophomore Rich Zajeski.

“I see him as what pushes me to get better every day,” Scales says of his mentor. “His patience as a runner, his confidence as a runner, his ability to see the game for what all is going on—his vision on the field is second to none. And so that’s what I pursue and I try to be every day.”

For Gordon’s part, facing competition has driven the already-accomplished athlete to take steps to improve his game.

“When you have these young guys kind of clipping at your heels every time, it really pushes you to keep trying, not just to stay static and stay the same player as I’ve been since freshman year,” he says.

But though Scales and Zajeski, who made an impression on Murphy in preseason and will fill the spot in the tailback rotation left by the graduation of Cheng Ho ’10, may be learning from Gordon on the field, that doesn’t mean their relationship is all business.

“I mess with him all the time,” Scales admits with a grin. “We call him G-Pops, we call him Grandpa, because he’s so much older than me. So he gives us heck for that all the time.”

Joking aside, the elder statesman gets as much out of the relationship as his protégé.

“We’re all brothers on this team, we’re all very close, but to have someone like Treavor who’s at my position, who has the same mindset, has the same goals, same type of competitive drive—it’s really nice,” Gordon says. “I hope that he’s able to learn from everything that I do and take it a step further.”

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.