Psyching Up With Superstition

In the last year and a half of his career, Harvard men's basketball standout Joe Carrabino never missed a free throw in the last five minutes of any game.

During the same period, Carrabino also dribbled the ball exactly six times before each of those free throws. Not five, not seven, Six.

The pattern was this same, unchanging chain of events: foul, whistle, dribble, swish.

For Carrabino-and most athletes-it doesn't matter how it works; only that it does work. They call it superstition, they call it technique, or they call it fate. But whatever the ritual, athletes need it to perform.

Take men's tennis team Co-Captain David Beckman '85. He has been playing tennis for 13 years. For 10 of those 13, whenever he is in changeover, he has taken four sips of water. Not five, not three, Four.

Carrabino will not play comfortably unless he is second to last out of the locker room before each game. He will not play unless he is wearing a brand-new pair of socks.

Varsity golfer Robert Harper plays in a royal-blue Izod shirt. It is the same shirt he wore when he first broke par at the age of nine. It is a bit small, he says, but once again he will be wearing it this spring.

"What we all do is make an effort to get a handle on our lives," says head tennis and squash coach David Fish. "People have an experience, a tough match where they were on top, and they associate all the variables of that experience as having to be present."

In the next confrontation, he adds, the player will want to reproduce his previous performance To do this, all the variables will also have to be reproduced.

With this systemization, a superstition, is so incorporated into the repertoire that it is inseparable from it.

"I always wipe the bottom of my sneakers with my right hand, then my left," says Sean P. Doyle '85, a varsity volleyball player, adding. "I put everything on right to left." Doyle has been doing this for five years.

Women's varsity swimming team co-captain Cary Mazzone '85 says, "I stretch in a particular way, and I always stretch in the same way."

Men's varsity hockey player and this year's Ivy Player of the Year Scott Fusco '86 puts on each part of his uniform at a certain time before game-start. "Anything you do to make yourself comfortable, to help yourself play better, is a good idea," he says.

Varsity basketball upstart Keith Webster '87 has his own careful routine as well. "I tuck in my shirt and lace my sneakers in a certain way," he says. "Everything is in a certain routine pattern." Webster also says that if the pattern is not followed exactly, it will "hang on my mind a bit."

It is often hard to distinguish between technique and superstition in sports. Harvard men's tennis singles whiz William Stanley '87 includes his penchant for bouncing the ball four times before each serve in the category of technique, specifically rhythm.

For example, Stanley will eat a certain break-fast-say, two tried eggs-on the first day of a tournament he says. If he wins, he will continue to eat the same breakfast. If he loses, he will eat something else.

For example, three years again the Faster Bowl Tennis Tournament, Stanley says he listened to the one song on Bruce Springsteen's "Darkness on the sleep. He also ate a hot fudge sundae every night of the tournament.

He consequently-or coincidentally-continued his initially strong performance into the finals, where he lost to to Aaron Krickstein, who is now ranked 10th in the world.

"Tennis is a game that's really played in the mind," says Stanley. "Everyone has the same strokes and plays the same at this level. The person with a little more confidence wins."

Charlie R. Marchese '85, member of the men's varsity baseball team and last year's All-Ivy first team, tells of the time two years ago the field house packed not-very-stretchy stirrup socks in the bags of some players for their trip to Florida.

"I was frustrated," he says. "I hated them for doing that to me." On that trip, after unsuccessful efforts to trade with someone, he had to pitch against the Red Sox wearing the not-very-stretchy socks.

He pitched the game terribly, he says. Did the shrunken foot-wear have anything to do with it? "I'm sure it did," the senior pitcher says.

"It works from a logical point of view," says Branimit Zivkovic, Harvard fencing coach. "An athlete has used a piece of equipment for a long time, and knows what it will do for him." He tells the story of a Harvard fencer who could note the difference made by a layer of paint on the handle of the foil.

"It's nothing supernatural," Zivkovie says.

"I'm not sure that superstition is the right word," says Mack I. Davis, an assistant dean of the College and sports psychologist for the men's swimming team. "For a lot of athletes, it is an association of certain behaviors and symbols with success."

These symbols and behaviors reduce natural anxiety which stem from competition, he adds. "Whatever those idiosyncrasies are, you should leave them alone," he adds.

Davis himself was a "great tea-toast-and-honey man" as a high-school quarter-miler, he says, and rarely competed without eating the meal beforehand.

Does it ever reach the point where the player depends on his superstition?

"If your habits are correct, your game will be most comfortable," Carrabino says. Last year's Ivy Players of the Year was very accustomed to his one-hour nap after the pre game meal. It was his ritual.

On the Cornell Columbia roadtrip of this year, however, he was unable to catch the necessary z's "Because we were on the road. I wasn't able to sleep, and I didn't play well those games."

In medicine, It's called a placebo: the mind is powerful enough to create a cure from the thought of a cure If Carrabino really thinks that the nap is necessary for good performance. If very well might be.

Varsity spiker Dovle, for instance, always wears a grey Harvard shirt when playing in volleyball games. However, "One time, when we were playing Princeton, it didn't work," he says. "But, I took off my shirt, and then did well for the rest of the game."

"It's not like [superstition] controls me," he adds. "But in sports, you want every added advantage you can get. That's the whole deal."

Coach of the men's varsity swimming team Joe Bernai says, "When you step up to that block, it's 90-percent psychological and 10-percent physical. At that point you need a psychological massage."

For many swimmers, that dependence is on their crimson Harvard towels. "I' they forget their Harvard towel, they walk around talking to themselves about it." How that affects performance no one can say, he adds.

Bernal is not exempt from the psychological massage himself. When he coached swimming at Fordham University, he used to go straight from his job to the pool without changing out of his three-piece suit.

"Even in the very important meets we had against St. John's and Villanova, I never had time to change," says the 66-3 coach. Still, it did not become a ritual until one meet at which he had time to change out of his suit.

"We were beaten badly," he says. And, since then, the complete three-piece suit on the swim deck has been his trademark.

Women's varsity swimmer and backstroke specialist Elaine Sang '87 sits behind the starting blocks ten minutes before she is scheduled to swim. "If I do poorly, I don't think it's because I was there really early. But if I don't get behind the blocks early, I can then blame my performance on it."

If she ran right up to the block seconds before the starting pistol, and then performed amazingly, would she change her ritual? "I might think it over a bit," the swimmer says.

Harvard athletes are not alone in the world of sports and superstition. Tennis players are notorious for not stepping on the court's lines. Baseball players and managers carefully step over the foul line.

Clothing too is ritualized. According to tennis team Co-Captain Beckman, Vilas Gerutalis will not play without the headband that up to now served him well. When someone stole it. Gerutalis "raised a ruckus" about locating it quickly.

"It's all really silly," he says. "You know you'll always be there. You just want a little extra."

"I always wipe the bottom of my sneakers with my right hand, then my left," says Sean P. Doyle '85, a varsity volleyball player. "I put everything on right to left." Doyle has been doing this for five years.