He Just Wants to Play Soccer

With 12 minutes remaining in the Harvard-Princeton men's soccer game last Satuday, Captain Robert Bonnie approached Coach Mike Getman and asked to go back on the field.

His nose was bruised and bloody--broken in a collision at midfield earlier that half. There were two pounds of tape on his right ankle.

It was only the second time he had been on the bench this season. He had too much energy, too much enthusiasm, to sit on the sidelines. Bonnie wanted to play.

"The adrenalin was going, it was one of the most important games of the season," Bonnie says. "After the loss to Dartmouth, that was make or break for the season."

Getman wasn't really surprised by Bonnie's request. In his two years as coach, Getman has come to expect that kind of dedication and tenacity out of his stopper. He just shook his head and sent him back in.

"To go back in with a sprained ankle and a broken nose and dominate the way he did, that certainly indicates Robert's character," Getman says.

As the team captain, Bonnie leads by example. He works hard at practice and plays hard in games--no matter what the circumstances. He injured his ankle the first day of pre-season. He didn't let the injury cost him a single day of practice. He still plays every game in pain.

Harvard--ranked first at the start of the year--has struggled to a 6-3-2 mark so far this season. But Bonnie doesn't let the disappointment affect his game. His goal is to play good soccer, and he expects the same effort out of his teammates.

"This year we haven't had as much luck [as last year]," says Gian D'Ornellas, Bonnie's classmate and backfielder partner. "That makes the job of the captain enormously more difficult. Robert's responded to that job really well. He knows how to motivate, and I think that really showed in the game against Princeton."

"His number one asset is his leadership, without a doubt," Getman says. "Second is his toughness, his tenacity. Third would be his dominance in the air."

Having grown up on a horse farm in Kentucky, Bonnie was more likely to end up a steeplechaser--like his father--than a soccer player. He was a walk-on at Harvard, behind the others in experience and training.

"Robert has improved more over four years than any player I've ever seen," D'Ornellas says. "He's gone from a player uncertain of his role to being one of the best players on the team and one of the best defenders in New England and the Ivy League."

A midfielder in high school, Bonnie took one look at the speed and skill of the Crimson midfield--which at that time boasted talented Englishmen Paul Nicholas and Nick Hotchkin--and knew he'd have to take on a new position at Harvard.

He focused on stopper Ian Hardington--a senior who would leave a big hole in the backfield upon graduation.

"Looking at Ian Hardington, I saw he had the same build, the same strengths," Bonnie said. "I realized if I wanted to make the team, that was where I would have to be."

It was sheer hard work that earned him a starting position his sophomore season. And hard work that earned him a reputation as an aggressive backfielder and a dominant player in the air.

"I've put a lot aside for this season, for all the seasons," Bonnie says. "I try to strike a healthy balance, but I can't help but in the middle of class to be thinking of the next game, or the last game..."

He's made two trips to the NCAA tournament--in '86 and '87. Those games will not be forgotten easily, even though Bonnie refuses to watch the videotape of Harvard's penaltykick loss to San Diego St. in the semifinals last December.

A loss more painful than a broken nose and sprained ankle combined.

It's unlikely that Bonnie will make it back to the Final Four this year. But he knows there will be other games--games like the Princeton contest last weekend--that will mean just as much to him.

"I had to go back in," Bonnie says. "I just couldn't miss the fun, the excitement."

On the first play following his return to the field, Bonnie found a goalie punt coming right at him. The ball looked to him as if it was moving in slow motion--straight for his head.

"All I could think was, 'Is this going to hurt?'" Bonnie remembers.

Sure, it hurt.

Did he care? No. He was having too much fun to feel it.

"Hey, Princeton was great," Bonnie says. "I wouldn't trade my broken nose for anything."

Today's Home Game

Men's water polo vs. MIT, 8 p.m., Blodgett Pool