Roadkill at Rest: "Caring Criticism"

Harvard Sports. Who cares?

You probably do, given the fact that you are reading this column in the first place. And good for you--this university needs more people like us, alumni and students, even if only to keep itself away from the precipice of eternal eggheadedness.

I certainly care, and will continue to do so long after I graduate. I wrote my first ever story for The Crimson about a Harvard soccer victory over Columbia back in the fall of 1992 (several lifetimes ago, for most of us) and played in my first golf tournament for Harvard several weeks later. What happy thoughts, what beautiful memories I could bore you with in this space if I chose to do so.

But let me instead relate one of the worst episodes in my life as a Harvard student-athlete-journalist (not necessarily in that order, mind you), and why it stands for one of the most insidious, destabilizing forces within Harvard Athletics, even if it may not seem to do so.

This past winter, the men's hockey team got off to a slow start. Not slow, perhaps, by recent standards, but certainly relative to the glory teams of my first few years at Bright Hockey Center. The Crimson looked to be in serious trouble.

[Just to state the credentials upon which I could make this analysis: I began covering the hockey team in February of '93, starting with The Crimson as a reporter and columnist and then branching out to do play-by-play and color commentary for WHRB. I think I've seen Harvard play between 90 and 100 times in person--nearly 6,000 minutes of competitive hockey.

I've seen the Crimson play teams from Poland and Russia at home, and the University of Alaska-Fairbanks on the road. I learned that my father had died while in a hotel during the middle of a St. Lawrence-Clarkson road trip. I watched Steve Flomenhoft and Matty Mallgrave (who?) finish their senior seasons. I even spent some time with the J.V. team as an emergency goalie, though I never got to play outside of practice.

In other words, I like to think that I know a thing or two about Harvard hockey, through sheer immersion and osmosis if nothing else.] So, in a column I published on Nov. 19, after a 6-2 loss at Princeton, I felt more than justified in evaluating the Crimson's performance as rather less than stellar.

The power play stank. Outside of the solo brilliance of Rob Millar, the offense was impotent. Freshman goalie J.R. Prestifilippo looked young, especially suspect in standing up to high shots.

It is this last critique that got me in some trouble--specifically in how I related this choice metaphor to Presto's early-season appearance: "'Stop, drop and roll' is sound advice during a fire drill, not a goaltending clinic."

Harsh? Yes. Descriptive? I'd have thought so. Accurate? Yes, I think, though obviously in spirit rather than in letter. Criticism welcomed by those involved with the hockey program? Not in the slightest.

Suffice it to say that head coach Ronn Tomassoni was less than pleased, and that the team quickly circled its wagons around young Prestifilippo. Tomassoni told me that any and all future criticism should be directed either at the team in general terms (e.g. "The offense has been having trouble scoring goals"--but then, how could I begin to approach "goaltending" when there was only one of them?), or at he himself as the coach. I was advised that consequences would ensue were I to do otherwise.

Tomassoni was only doing his job--and in a way I respected him for it. Good coaches should serve as lightning rods of criticism, no matter how solidly grounded their teams are. But where did that leave me? Quite confused, needless to say.

I have always valued the truth over everything in my reporting. This doesn't just mean not lying; it means telling the full truth as accurately as I know how. I believe that you, the reader, shouldn't have to be at the game to know that forward X committed three heinously stupid penalties in one period, that goalie Y let in a soft goal that he should have stopped, that defenseman Z slipped and fell to allow a 2-on-1 from which the other team scored the game-winning goal.

In the first two of these examples, you have the option of accepting my judgment or calling it into question. Like a film critic, I try to voice opinions of both style and substance; if you disagree with me, that's fine, but at least I will have said what I'm thinking. (This in and of itself separates The Crimson from a certain tabloid mentality, wherein a writer may only be saying what they think others will pay money to read.)

And after a while, you'll have come to either trust my observational skills or disregard them. But--and this is the important part--I don't see how you can ever come to respect any praise I give to a team or a player unless I am open to criticizing it or him or her. It is precisely because I saw and remarked upon Prestifilippo's flaws that you should believe me when I say that he was the Crimson's MVP this past year, that he grew into his role and got better and better as the season went by (even if he did look a little bit tired at times down the stretch).

Besides, what purpose would it serve for me to be a homer? For me to say in victory that Harvard played well, but in defeat that at least Harvard gave it the ol' Crimson try? This is not journalism. And I refuse to debase everything that this paper stands for by lowering its standards thusly, even if many of my colleagues over the years have done exactly this.

Which brings me to that other example, the one involving defenseman Z and his unfortunate slip-up. This for me is a no-brainer: the mistake is obvious, the cause-and-effect relationship between it and the goal is unquestionable, and the importance of that goal demands a full retelling of the circumstances surrounding it.

And yet, I have seen such examples cited anonymously in these pages, usually by writers not wishing to unduly embarrass the mistake-making player. This same writer, mind you, typically has no problem elevating that same player upon a pedestal when he/she does well--and thus do we get closer to the heart of the problem.

Fundamentally, The Crimson's influence upon the Department of Athletics is minimal--we are a student newspaper, not an institution possessing judicial checks and balances--so take the following with several grains of salt. But believe you this: The "journalistic" policy of ignoring failure and glorifying success encourages mediocrity at all levels. When a team is unwilling to probe itself for weaknesses, or discourages the formulation of an atmosphere in which constructive criticisms can be purposefully used, stasis will remain--and for "stasis," all too often insert "stagnation."