Rosenberger: A Two-Sport Letterman

Two winters ago Leif Rosenberger and eight other hockey players were in a car accident driving home from a post-game celebration. When the police arrived at the scene of the accident, they asked Rosenberger if a black sedan had driven his car off the road. Rosenberger replied yes, a lie. The police then agreed to give him and his friends a lift to the Pi Eta Club.

While Rosenberger has earned a reputation for handling drunken mishaps, he has also won the recognition he deserves as one of Harvard's few two-sport lettermen. In the past three years he has been awarded five varsity letters, three as a hockey forward and two as a lacrosse midfield man. Rosenberger has always been interested in athletics. Before coming to Harvard he attended St. Marks School in Southboro, where he was captain of the hockey and lacrosse teams. "Back then, sports was the big thing in my life," he said. His goal was to go to the best athletic university in the East.

Cornell was Rosenberger's first choice. In the spring of his senior year at St. Marks, he visited Cornell at the invitation of coach Ned Harkness. He was planning to go there until Harkness told him at the last minute that he could only be admitted to a trade school, not to the liberal arts college.

Although Rosenberger was critical of the Crimson lacrosse program, he decided to come to Harvard anyway. Freshman year he was disappointed with Harvard athletics.

"At St. Marks we got really psyched out of our minds for games," he said. "Here everybody was too sophisticated for that. Everything was won on talent--there was no real esprit de corps."

To compensate for the unstimulating athletic program, Rosenberger led "a pretty good" social life freshman year. "It was an ego trip," he said, "bringing girls over and performing in front of them by getting drunk."

Sophomore year Rosenberger had his best Harvard hockey season, scoring close to 20 points. When the lacrosse season started, only a handful of players came out. "It was then that I started to respect the players who did come out," he remembers. "I began to realize there were pre-med lacrosse players, people who were not just jocks."

In the past two years Rosenberger says that he has taken an interest in studying and that his grades have improved. "I used to take all guts," he said. "Now I'm taking hard courses and doing a lot better. I'm not really that stupid, although I hide it pretty well."

Rosenberger says that he is more psyched for lacrosse this spring than he has ever been before. In order to concentrate on sports and his six courses, he has decided to retire from the wild life of the Pi Eta Club. Spectators will miss his nude runs from the club's Mt. Auburn St. location to Nini's Corner.