From Booking Hotel Rooms to Putting on Wrestling Gear

They are invisible--and often invaluable--members of sports teams.

When box lunches and hotel rooms are needed, they answer the call. When arrangements are needed for transportation, they make the call.

Student managers do their jobs without pay and without much thanks from the general public. And they are usually the people everybody on the team turns to when something goes awry.

Every team has its own problems. Take football, for instance.

Eight managers have to provide for the needs of about 180 football players even before August practice. The needs of the players can be pretty extensive. Just ask head undergraduate football manage Lisa Peets '88.

"Getting us in Claverly Hall, getting our meals in the Union, making sure that we had the fields lined, that all the equipment was new, that the equipment people knew what they needed, that the managers could be here early, that the coaches had a place to stay, that everybody had sheets and towels and pillowcases. All of the most ridiculous little things," Peets says.

"That's probably the hardest," says assistant varsity manager Jill Maza '88. "The coaches tell us what they need out on the field before the practice and we make sure it's all there. They count on us for everything."

Even after the hot, hectic days of fall practice there is still the matter of helping out with regular practice.

"We go to every single practice, and we've got at least two or three at varsity and one to two people at freshman practice every single day," says head freshman manager Yazmin Mehdi '90

On game days, managers have their hands in many tasks, including finding halftime resting stops for their teams.

During the Harvard-Brown football game in Providence this year, football Coach Joe Restic and the football managers decided to move the players halftime resting room from under the stadium (which was unkept) to their changing room across the street (which included a number of amenities). It didn't quite work out.

"Suddenly, the players start charging across the field towards the rooms under the stadium," says head varsity manager Mary Reyes '89. "We had to bring everything back. You should have seen it; it was just people running, carrying these huge blackboards across the field."

But the managers worked as a team, which helps in all the crisis situations which football, and other sports, have.

"I think one of the most important things is working with other managers," Peets says. "It is a very large sport, and it's not possible for one person to do everything."

"You've got to relay confidence," Reyes says. "If you don't, then the whole program doesn't know what to do. You have to relay confidence even if things are totally falling down around you."

Other teams are not exempt from peculiar crises.

Men's soccer manager Alexandra Barstow '88 arranged the soccer team's NCAA tournament trip to Connecticut. on short notice. "You don't know about it until the week before," Barstow says. "I was calling home to my mother and getting her to look things up in the phone book for me."

Other kinds of scheduling can be a problem. Women's water polo manager Janie Rangel '90 knows this very well. "We haven't got a set schedule," Rangel says. "Football has a set schedule two years in advance. Sometimes I don't know who we're playing until I get there."

And during a critical Harvard-Dartmouth basketball game played in leaky Briggs Cage, one manager not only had to keep score of the game but had to fight the forces of nature. Otherwise, one slip could determine the outcome. "There were lines of water across the floor and I had to find people to help me clean up water between plays," men's basketball manager Monica Phillips '90 recalls.

Many times, the manager has to serve as statistician. Lorraine Lago '90, the manager of the women's lacrosse team, had never seen a lacrosse game in her life. "It was the first time I went away with them. We were at Cornell, and that night the coach and I spent three hours going over videos," Lago says.

In the faster action of men's lacrosse, scoring needs to get straightened out in a hurry. "It's important who gets that assist," men's lacrosse manager Stacey Berg '89 says. "So as they come back off the field, and everybody is congratulating everybody else, I'm having to ask who did what."

Why do they do it? Some do it for the travel. "The weather there was about 10 degrees warmer that it was here, so we were making the big trip to the sun." Barstow recalls of the soccer team's trip to Clemson, S.C.

Some do it for the camaraderie. "I knew I wanted to manage because I enjoyed the feeling of being on a team," Barstow says.

Managing, for some, is now a full--time activity. "I think I could get hit by a bus and have no problem," Peets says with a laugh. "I'd just get back up and walk myself to the hospital."

"It's something I can do in my sleep now," says Colleen Collins '88, manage of cross-country, indoor and outdoor track.

"It adds up to more time than you ever thought it would be," Barstow says. "I knew I would probably end up going to [soccer] games anyway and I thought, 'But I'm going to feel guilty if I know I ought to be writing a paper,' but if I was the manager, I'd have to go."

"I have to go down an hour before the game and buy all the food," Berg says. "By the time I finish doing all the stats, it's two hours after the game is over."

Nobody understands the problems of managing a team better than other managers. So, the managers have formed a group called the Undergraduate Managers' Council to get support and unity among the managers of various sports. The Council is organizing itself along the lines of the old Undergraduate Managers' Council--which disbanded in the early 1970s.

"Every four years or so, someone tries to revive it and it doesn't work out," says Collins, who heads the UMC. "I think managers have their team they're involved with but none of us know each other. I think we can be a great support system."

As an organization, the UMC is recruiting new managers, publishing guidelines and rules to streamline the process of managing and to otherwise unify the managers, according to Collins. Also, the council would be useful to help get rid of old managerial stereotypes, Collins says.

"As other people see it, a manager is just some out-of-shape girl who hangs out and tries to pick up guys," Collins says. "Being a manager, I don't think the outside community has a good view of what we do. We might be seen as gophers or something, but my teams really respect what I do. That's what makes it all worthwhile."

And the work is still important. if not for the general public, then for the sake of the team.

"At first I thought it was just Go to the game, do the scoring, and leave," says women's basketball manager Sonia Masters '91. "But now I realize that it is very important."

"It's definitely fun, because I've enjoyed being associated with the athletic department, learning how the athletic department works and the excitement of following a team," Barstow says.

But there are times when managers at Harvard have responded over and above the call of duty.

Once the Harvard wrestling team was in a quandary. The Crimson was having a tough night against MIT, and the coaches knew that the match would go down to the wire.

There was just one problem. The Crimson couldn't produce a wrestler for the 134-lb. weight class. If it couldn't, MIT would receive five points for the forfeit, two more than it would if a Harvard had simply lost the match.

Harvard needed to minimize the loss of points that it might receive for the match. In stepped manager Eric Behrens, who lost the match on points. The teams ended in a tie.

Believe it or not, Collins competes for her team, though on a more permanent basis.

"I was kidding around with the coach and said that I would throw the weight," Collins says. "Next thing you know, I'm in the circle throwing. I never expected that in my life."

Some managers say that they find the long-term work difficult. But their ability to organize trips to faraway places without a hitch and to keep the Harvard house in order gives them a great deal of satisfaction.

"In the paper every weekend, you see 'So-and-so scored two goals,'" says men's hockey manager Jason Wenglin '89. "You don't see 'Jason made a flawless weekend; the hotel rooms were perfect and the buses were smooth.'"

"When everything goes right, there's a good feeling I get," says men's basketball manager Erika Thomas '90. "The coaches are really appreciative and the players are really appreciative."

"Anything can go wrong," Wenglin says. "The greatest amount of satisfaction is when the players and the coaches get on the bus Thursday--they know it's going to be there. They know that they're going to walk into a hotel and there is going to be a box lunch waiting for them. They know that when they get up in the morning, there's going to be a big breakfast for them. They know that I'm going to take care of tickets. They know that there's going to be ice time for them on Friday, they know that there's going to be a meal for them during the day, and they know that they can just go to the rink. They don't have to worry about it. I have to worry about it."