Football Players Work to 'Conquer Adversity'
Every August, at the first team meeting of Harvard football, head coach Tim Murphy gives a speech.
Rows of face hover in front of him. Some are new. Some are sunburnt. All glow with early-season health. Murphy surveys the scene. He can feel the collective hope; everyone can. Then the coach launches into a strange topic—adversity.
“We talk about it before it ever happens so that seed is planted in their mind,” Murphy said. “The most important thing we do, among many relatively important things we teach, is that there are going to be setbacks in life.”
As Murphy likes to say, Harvard football functions as “a school within a school.” Certain teachings structure the program. “Resiliency training” stands above all others.
When Murphy recruits a player, he leans on a stock saying: “Harvard isn’t a four-year investment. It’s a 40-year investment.” It’s a nice turn of phrase, and players often parrot the words when asked why they chose the Crimson. However, the true meaning of the phrase remains obscure until you ask Murphy about adversity. Learning how to overcome setbacks—this is what Murphy really means.
“Life can be very, very tough,” Murphy said. “You can either embrace that, or you can wilt under those conditions. We choose to be able to conquer adversity.”
As much as Murphy talks about adversity—and he talks about it a lot—the best way to understand the resiliency of Harvard football is to observe players. All have faced challenges. All have formulated solutions.
College athletes are strong. By definition, they are strong. What makes Crimson football players especially strong is their engagement with adversity. By late November, the turf at Harvard Stadium is cold and hard. Harvard veterans are used to getting up.
“Adversity is battling with the guys that you have and getting the job done when people think that you won’t,” safety Tanner Lee said. “[It’s] just this season as a whole.”
‘NOTHING AT ALL EVER CAME EASY’
Most Division I programs boast over 100 players. Such enormous size presents practical challenges. Tweaking schemes means printing thousands of pages of paper. Resetting priorities means renting an auditorium.
The most successful teams thrive off continuity—not only in Saturday performance but also in the vocabulary and rules of the team. Coaches must tread carefully when defining values.
There’s a reason, in other words, that Harvard football focuses on adversity. Head coach Tim Murphy is that reason.
“Someday I’m going to write a book, and the title is going to be, ‘Life is a Comeback,’” Murphy said. “There’s always something in your life. The people who can develop that resiliency to fight…are most successful.”
Raised in Kingston, Mass., Murphy summarized his childhood in one adjective: “blue-collar.” He went to Silver Lake Regional High School, a place that experienced overcrowding difficulties in the mid-1970s. No one in his family had gone to college.
“Nothing at all ever came easy,” Murphy said. “My mom had to do most of the heavy lifting.”
In seventh grade, Murphy found a friend and role model in Buddy Teevens. Now the head coach at Dartmouth, Teevens started at quarterback for Silver Lake while Murphy started at linebacker. Both played in college—Teevens at Dartmouth and Murphy at Springfield.
College football transformed Murphy, physically and otherwise. He added 45 pounds to his 175-pound frame and befriended Pete Watson. In college, Watson ran the Pride offense as quarterback. Now he runs Greif, Inc., a packaging company that rakes in over four billion dollars of revenue each year.
“Pretty simply, I hung around with the right kids,” Murphy said. “They were ambitious, no-nonsense, incredibly hard-working people. I knew that’s who I wanted to be.”
Murphy, of course, runs something as well—the Crimson football program. He took over the job in Dec. 1993 after a rapid ascent through Brown, Maine, and Cincinnati.
Murphy’s job has taken him across the country, to stadiums in all sorts of cities and towns. In some ways, though, he has never left Kingston.
“If I had grown up in the proverbial three-car-garage background—and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, just in a socioeconomic way—I might have been successful,” Murphy said. “I definitely wouldn’t have been as driven. For lack of a better way to put it, I didn’t want to go back there.”
That resiliency bleeds over into the rest of the program. Which is good because Harvard football players face no shortage of adversity.
A STRAINED GROIN, A HIGH-ANKLE SPRAIN, AND A BRUISED KNEECAP
There were mornings when Justice Shelton-Mosley wanted to stay in bed.
Sacramento, Calif., can be a place of golden sunshine, a temperate paradise where lazy summer days stretch into cool nights, a leafy haven along a gentle river—but not at 4 a.m. At that hour, Sacramento looks like every other city. It’s dark. Nothing moves. The air is warm, maybe, but not as warm as three more hours of sleep.
Shelton-Mosley was rising at 4 a.m. by the time he was in seventh grade. His father, Anthony Mosley, had played running back at Fresno State and bounced around the NFL and CFL. He had settled in Northern California and started to coach.
By 2011, he had taken on two proteges—wide receiver Michael Thomas and cornerback Marcus Rios. The duo grunted through morning workouts devised by Mosley. Also straining was Mosley’s 12-year-old son, Justice Shelton-Mosley.
Thomas later signed with UNLV. Rios signed with UCLA and made the Denver Broncos practice squad. As for Shelton-Mosley, he flew across the country to an FCS program called Harvard.
“I kind of forget about those days, about how much work I put in,” Shelton-Mosley said. “[My dad] was huge in getting me to this point.”
That grueling schedule habituated Shelton-Mosley to early mornings. When the Crimson holds workouts, players must arise at 5:45 a.m., sometimes earlier. Compared to Shelton-Mosley’s previous regimen, that schedule seems like a vacation.
At Harvard, however, the All-Ivy wide receiver has encountered another kind of adversity—injuries.
In 2016, Shelton-Mosley was coming off of a freshman campaign in which he had made the All-American third team. He had set Harvard records for punt return and kickoff return average.
But in the second game of 2016, he suffered a strained groin. He returned two weeks later but sprained his ankle against Cornell. That injury persisted for much of the season, even as Shelton-Mosley returned to action. Later, a bruised kneecap added to his woes.
“It was a tough, tough year,” Shelton-Mosley said. “I probably shouldn’t have been playing. I was able to continue at a somewhat high level with the help of the training staff.”
This “somewhat high level” of play was enough to earn Shelton-Mosley a unanimous selection to the All-Ivy first team. But the sophomore clearly played through pain. In several games, he lined up as wide receiver but not as punt returner, hoping to minimize open-field tackles.
The setbacks forced Shelton-Mosley to draw on a reserve of strength. In high school, Shelton-Mosley had excelled—not just on the field but in the classroom. As a running back, he shattered a school record with 88 touchdowns. He made the dean’s list. He ran a 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds. He was elected to the student council.
Failure—this was an unfamiliar experience. But Shelton-Mosley could draw on those 4 a.m. wakeups. Also central was his Christian faith. This worldview, quite simply, put adversity in perspective.
“I was able to bounce back,” Shelton-Mosley said. “For me, being religious, things don’t go how you want them to go. But it can be God’s plan.”
'YOU HAVE TO LOSE SLEEP SOMETIMES’
Harvard, in case you didn’t know, holds students to high academic standards. The most constant adversity for Crimson players lies in the school-football balance.
“It’s just the grind, really,” Lee said. “You have to lose sleep sometimes. You just have to stay up, work, and make sure you get everything done by the time you go to sleep.”
Lee has fought this battle for years. At Daphne High School, Lee went on the International Baccalaureate track. The Applied Math concentrator would leave school at seven, work until midnight, and wake up at six.
But Daphne also boasts one of the top football programs in Alabama—which is no small claim. As a freshman, Lee played on the scout team, lining up against then-senior running back T.J. Yeldon. The roster boasted five future NFL players.
Excellence stemmed from intense work. During the season, Daphne held events six days a week. Reprieve only came on Saturday so players could heal from Friday contests.
“The football time requirement was a lot,” Lee said. “When I came here, it was harder because the work was a little harder and football was a lot better. But the time management skills that I acquired in high school carried over.”
Lee was lucky for that training because Harvard athletes face enormous academic pressures. During the fall, football players get up early for workouts, take classes in the late morning and early afternoon, and practice into the evening. Games require at least six hours. And when the Crimson plays away, the team tends to leave Friday and return late Saturday, effectively shaving a day-and-a-half off the week.
It doesn’t help that the Harvard season peaks in early November, when students face a bevy of assignments. Or that physical exhaustion impedes academic performance. Or that football players must battle the “dumb jock” stereotype. Crimson athletes hit the books all the same.
“As long as I turn everything in and put maximal effort into it, I feel pretty good about it,” Lee said. “I’m way better now than I was when I got here.”
‘THOSE ARE THE KINDS OF KIDS WE LOOK FOR’
Every year, Harvard admits a gaggle of high school seniors from New York City, but few end up on the football team. Brooklyn, it turns out, isn’t a football hotbed.
Offensive lineman Mark Goldman is an exception. He grew up in the Empire City as the son of Ukrainian immigrants. Neither parent spoke English. For the first five years of his life, neither did Goldman.
“Those are the kinds of kids we look for,” Murphy said. “The more we have in life, the less opportunity we necessarily get to build up that resilience…. When you don’t have a lot, you have to find a way.”
Academics helped Goldman assimilate, as did football. He served as captain at Midwood High School, a high-achieving public school in Brooklyn. Still, Goldman ended his senior football season without receiving an offer from Harvard.
That winter, the offensive lineman sent emails to various recruiters, including Crimson defensive coordinator Scott Larkee. Harvard requested a visit. Goldman confirmed, excitedly. Then a blizzard struck.
Goldman, his father, and a family friend decided to travel anyway. Through heavy snow, the trio drove from New York City to Cambridge. Murphy was waiting on the other end and soon extended an offer.
“He obviously saw my film and knew I could play a little bit,” Goldman. “But I think he mostly appreciated that I really wanted it.”
The son of a Ukrainian immigrant. A native Russian speaker. Goldman stands out for several reasons. But paradoxically, his exceptional background suits him to Harvard football, where scores of players come from unconventional circumstances.
One of Murphy’s earliest recruits was Isaiah Kacyvenski, a linebacker who grew up homeless in Upstate New York. His father struggled with alcoholism. His mother was struck by a truck and killed during Kacyvenski’s senior year.
Murphy persuaded Kacyvenski to sign with the Crimson. The decision proved fateful, as the 6’1” linebacker made the All-American first team as a senior. Murphy sometimes uses Kacyvenski as an example of how strength can emerge from great suffering.
The coach also cited freshman Aaron Shampklin when discussing player resilience.
“He’s such a positive person, such a positive kid,” Murphy said. “He’s off the charts. It’s all natural.”
The running back attended Long Beach Polytechnic, a 4,400-person high school just south of Los Angeles. The California school boasts a legendary football program that has graduated NFL mainstays such as DeSean Jackson, Willie McGinest, and Juju Smith-Schuster. As a senior, Shampklin served as captain. Before Shampklin, though, no Long Beach football player had ever come to Harvard.
To complicate matters, Shampklin was in need of significant tuition help. FBS programs could offer full-ride scholarships. The Crimson could offer financial aid.
In the recruiting process, Shampklin had the support of his parents, who urged the high schooler to consider the Crimson. So Shampklin did, forgoing a scholarship from Washington State to join Harvard.
“I wanted to change the culture back home,” Shampklin said. “Most people don’t see the Ivy League as an option…. Hopefully I affect generations after me.”
‘THIS YEAR IS SPECIAL’
All the talk of adversity and resilience came to head in 2017. Injuries, defeats, and emotional turmoil—rarely has Harvard experienced these challenges in such concentration.
The Crimson began the season at Rhode Island. In that 17-10 loss, freshman defensive back Ben Abercrombie collided with a wide receiver and suffered a serious cervical injury. Two months later, he remains in rehabilitation at the Shepard Center in Atlanta. While he has regained partial feeling, Abercrombie still struggles to perform basic functions on his own.
The hit transformed Harvard football. It transformed Abercrombie’s life. It transformed his family. It transformed Crimson football players—including Lee, who pledged to play the season in Abercrombie’s honor. The emotional fallout never really ended.
“You go out there and do what you’ve always done but in the face of some terrible things,” said Lee—who, like Abercrombie, is a defensive back from Alabama. “You have to figure things out for yourself.”
The season continued. Harvard dropped four contests, each brutal in its own way. Rhode Island, because the Crimson lost a season opener for the first time since 2011. Cornell, because the Big Red trampled Harvard for over 200 rushing yards. Princeton, because the Tigers embarrassed the defense in a 52-17 final. Penn, because the Quakers broke Crimson hearts for the third-straight year.
Another setback came through a historic plague of injuries. Of the 11 defensive starters in the opener, nine have missed a game. Six have suffered season-ending injuries. Gone is junior Wesley Ogsbury, the top cornerback. Gone is junior D.J. Bailey, an All-Ivy selection in 2016. Gone are Anthony Camargo and Jordan Hill, two promising young linebackers. Coaches have pieced together the defense with youngsters and duct tape. Then the duct tape has broken.
“At times, right now, there’s not even a full scout team to go against the first-team offense,” Murphy said. “You find a way to make it work.”
In this sense, 2017 has tested Murphy’s most fundamental teaching—the emphasis on resilience. It’s fitting that the season ends against Yale. The Crimson’s skid marks trace back to The Game in 2016, when the Bulldogs pulled off an upset. The defeat left seniors dazed and juniors motivated.
A year later, the juniors have become seniors. Yale has matured into an Ivy League champion. And a sea of adversity swirls between November 2016 and November 2017.
“All the teams that I’ve played with would have been able to handle the adversity that we’ve been through,” Lee said. “This year is special…because we’ve actually had to do it.”
—Staff writer Sam Danello can be reached at sam.danello@thecrimson.com.