Some Senior Athletes... ...Who'll Be Missed

When Chip Robie arrived at Harvard from Choate, he brought a huge squash swing and very brisk drives. But he had little conception of what he was doing on the squash court except hitting hard.

"Dave [Harvard squash Coach Dave Fish] looked at me," Robie remembers, "changed my swing, and taught me what seemed like a million and two things about squash. After throwing the kitchen sink at me, he let me digest it, and four years later, I started playing great squash."

Indeed he did. Out of the confusion of those early years, Robie cultivated a complete and tactically astute game to the point that by the end of his senior year, he embodies "the Harvard game" more than anybody else on the squash team.

Elected co-captain a year ago by his peers. Robie capped his development as a player this past winter by rising to number two on the team and copping All-America and All-Ivy honors.

His team earned, for the second straight year, a half-share of the national championship with Princeton.

But interestingly enough, Robie points to a contest he played as a sophomore as his most memorable Harvard match.

In the winter of 1979, with a dual match against Princeton that annually decides the nine-man national championship deadlocked at four matches apiece, only Robie and opponent Jason Fish remained on Hemenway's courts.

A Cambridge fire inspector had closed down the packed building refusing to let any more spectators swell the ranks of 400 already inside. The assistant coaches from both squads had abandoned their vantage points on the court to pace the outlying corridors, unable to deal with the tension.

The match seesawed back and forth until Robie prevailed 15-13 in the final game, giving Harvard its first nine-man national championship in three years, and one the Crimson has failed to recaptare since.

Much of the success that Robie has attained he owes to hard work. He is an advocate of conditioning and well-spent practice time, and testimony to the idea that the more you put into something the more you get out of it.

His squash regimen includes three-hour practice days in the fall and winter, workouts five days a week in the summer, and running and conditioning up to four or five miles a day during the spring offseason.

"I wouldn't have given it the commitment," Robie said, "Unless I thought it was a worthwhile experience, one from which I could learn a great deal."

"I've gotten a couple of notes from guys on the team this spring thanking me for the effort I put into the team. I guess those notes mean as much as anything."