To Harvard From the City of Angels

If football is a game of controlled mayhem, Bob Woolway has the mayhem under control. In his three years on the Harvard varsity, the senior linebacker and defensive play-caller has earned a reputation as one of the Ivy League's most effective, durable, and intelligent defenders.

Where the Crimson defense has fluctuated in both quality and personnel over the past three years, Woolway stands out as a reliable constant. He has started every game but one in three years and called nearly every Harvard defensive play--even as a sophomore.

As it has for this entire Harvard team, everything has come together for the Los Angeles native in his final season. Woolway is the current runner-up in tackling on a defense rated second in the Ivies. And his most valuable asset never shows up in the stats.

"There's no way you can teach poise," says Harvard defensive coordinator George Clemens. "Bob just has it. Always has." Woolway exudes self-control and controls his teammates; his field presence-combined with his injury-defying omnipresence--have steered the Crimson away from more than a few potential disasters in three years.

Yet those who know him seem blithely unsurprised by his effectiveness. For Woolway, the over-achieving started young.

As a linebacker at Loyola High School in Los Angeles, Woolway played on the 1975 prep varsity that not only won the toughest league in the area, but finished as the number-one rated high school team in the nation.

The team didn't do quite as well his senior year, but Woolway--of course, the team captain--collected All League and All American honors. He corrects an error in the Harvard press guide that says he was number one in his class. "Not exactly valedictorian," he says. But close.

With such an array of credits, the scholarship offers started coming in. After an early flirtation with the University of Santa Clara, "I decided to go to Stanford after they offered me a scholarship." But after a coaching change, Stanford with-drew the offer.

But after a dismal start to his freshman year at Harvard, he thought about the Stanford offer more than once. Away from his large family (six brothers and sisters) for the first time, he says it was a "big adjustment period." Add to the transcontinental move a truncated freshman football season (two of six games were cancelled) and what seemed like "30 straight days of rain," and Woolway says he was "pretty unhappy." "I had never even used an umbrella before," the Angeleno laughs.

So Woolway became involved with the Big Brother program. The program, long associated with Harvard athletes, places students and neighborhood children in long-term relationships. Calling it "one of the best things I've done here," Woolway now is one six student directors of the program.

All-American

The result of all this is a frighteningly all-American picture. Red-haired, good-natured--at 6-ft. 3-in. and 205 lbs, he's a little too brawny for a Huck Finn comparison--Woolway has heard the all-American tag before.

However, like most Harvard athletes, he passes credit to his teammates. He yearns for the Ivy title, and, with the recent turn of events, it looks as if Harvard might get it. The team's losses obviously rankle him: "That Princeton game (a 7-3 loss in the rain) was a tragedy," made worse because his family made their first-ever trip east to see it.

But the Yale loss to Cornell ("too good to be true") has given Harvard a chance to share the title, providing it beats Penn this week and Yale the next. He will travel to Philadelphia this Saturday, confident, but with more trepidation than usual. The only blemish on his consecutive-game record came two years ago at Franklin Field when unseasonably hot weather gave him heart palpitations during pre-game warm-ups, and he sat out the contest.

Win or lose, Woolway has always felt comfortable with the student-athlete life. "People who know me know how important academics are to me," the economics major says. And his future is certainly heavy on the academics: he plans to apply to Ivy League law schools this year, and maybe to a joint J.D.-MBA program later.

So it sounds strange to hear him say, "You gotta get a little crazy on the field." He then allows quickly, "I have to stay level-headed, though, and make the calls." Woolway has been--and looks as if he will be--making the calls for a long time.