Becky Rogers

"My mother comes from southwestern France, a small agricultural village of about 200 people called Estagne. We go back every summer to her family house where my sister and I love to work in the fields. The people all know us as these American eccentrics, partly because we like to work, but mostly because I like to run. They just don't know what to make of it. Nobody runs in France.

This past summer I spent in Paris and ran every day along the banks of the Seine to the Eiffel Tower and back. I don't remember a day when at least five people didn't stop me to inquire why. 'Quelle une sportive!' they'd exclaim. They all thought I was training for the Olympics."

Becky Rogers has run in some pretty interesting places. This Thursday the captain of the women's cross-country and track teams and six of her teammates will travel to Seattle, Washington, for a crack at the national championships, set for November 17.

For the small, delicately featured Adams House senior--who is finishing up her first cross-country season-piloting her squad to a national berth represents the crowning achievement of her four years in Harvard athletics. But running has not always been a pleasure for Rogers; rather is has been a long trail of fears, doubts, small victories and bitter disappointments.

It was an inauspicious beginning, to say the least. Rogers grew up in State College, Pa., home of Penn State, where her father is an English professor and her mother taught French. Rogers joined the highly competitive State College High School track program in ninth grade.

Although she did quite well, Rogers was ostracized by her teammates for her outspoken emphasis on team spirit and unity instead of personal victory. After four years of increasingly poor times, resulting from repeated disappointments and disillusionments, Rogers came to Harvard intending never to run competitively again.

So she joined the women's soccer team. playing JV for two years and revelling in the camaraderie of a "real team sport." In the winter of her sophomore year, Rogers entered an indoor track race on a whim and surprised everyone--including herself--by running her best half-mile and cruising past quite a few team regulars.

The most important thing about that race was that she met Pappy. Coach Pappy Hunt and his leprechaun's twinkle and heavy Boston brogue got Rogers back on the track, the Harvard indoor track. "Pappy turned it all around for me. He paid attention to me, even though he knew nothing about me--my running backround wasn't exactly illustrious," Rogers says.

Rogers ran indoor and outdoor track that year and again junior year, consistently finishing strong in the half-mile. Then something happened along the banks of the Seine; and the distance running bug bit hard.

Rogers came back for two grueling weeks of pre-season cross country camp and was elected captain of the team. "We were running over 18 miles a day, but the worst was we had to get up at 5:30 a.m. and be out on the road at 6:30. I'm just not a morning runner," she says.

At the first meet of the season, a dual meet against UMass, the fears returned. Rogers started out at a blistering half-mile; by the second mile she was running in tremendous pain. She somehow crossed the finish line, slumped to the ground gasping for air (Rogers suffers from occasional attacks of asthma). "I thought the whole season would be this way--hardly an auspicious beginning. Here I was supposed to be their inspiring leader."

When the same thing happened a few meets later at the Greater Boston Championships, Rogers recalls former harrier captain Sarah Linsley advising her at the finish line to swallow her disappointment and become a strong, enthusiastic captain despite her personal performances. Linsley's words were apparently not taken in vain, for Rogers has been running more relaxed, faster races ever since, and her ability as a team leader is beyond dispute.

Rogers views her role as captain with a mixture of humility and keen insight: "As captain, I think it's better to be like everyone else. It's sometimes hard to relate to a superstar captain."

Neither is Rogers the typical Harvard athlete when it comes to the goals she sets for herself: "I never won, I'm not used to winning. Once when I won the half-mile in an indoor meet I remember it seemed very strange..."

Why would a varsity team elect a captain who doesn't like to win? The answer is simple: In a sport that demands tremendous self-discipline, sacrifice, time, toughness, and a day-to-day confrontation with pain, Rogers embodies the qualities of a team player. She consistently performs best in relay races, or cross-country meets that need a good Rogers performance to produce a team victory.

What compels her to run and suffer and sacrifice if not to win? "I like running fast," she says. "I like the sensation of feeling fast, feeling strong, and it's a good way to clear my mind."

While Rogers jokingly fears she's becoming a running addict--"I have to get my eight hours of sleep; I've nearly stopped drinking and always worry about what I eat now"--the sinewy senior keeps running in perspective. Rogers is as much in her element out on the course as she is in her ornate Claverly bedroom, poring over political cartoons of French caricaturist Honore Daumier, the subject of her current History thesis.

There are no marathons or professional road races in Roger's future; she is more interested in studying history at a French University next year, and she complains that fellowship applications can take as much time as her running.

But now that the distance bug has bit, Rogers will never stop running. Next time you're strolling along the Seine in Paris, keep a look out for a slim, blondponytailed figure with a light stride and a French history book under her arm; you can bet it's Becky Rogers.