Coleman's Wrestling Has Its Own Rules

For Harvard wrestler Pat Coleman, last year was a nightmare. The doubts began with the broken nose and intensified with the foot injury and an unexpected loss in the first round of the Easterns. Quitting often crossed his mind last spring. But he didn't and the team made him captain.

That was last year. Now the 150-pound grappler stands with the finest record of his varsity career (15-3-1); and with the NCAA districts coming up this weekend, Coleman is intent on bettering the fifth-place finish he earned two years ago.

Dark Hours

Sitting in his Claverly Hall apartment, surrounded by his biology textbooks and pictures of the girl he plans to marry after graduation, Coleman spoke philosophically about those dark hours spent last March and about the decision he's thankful he didn't make.

"Sure I was down after my junior year. Wrestling just didn't seem so important to me any more. But the fellows stuck behind me and gave me the encouragement and confidence I needed," Coleman said.

Man Alone

With the captaincy, the individual's role on a team is of course altered to an extent. Yet wrestling is always in essence a matter of one individual pitted against another.

"Wrestling is not the type of sport where you just stand up in the middle of a locker room and deliver a speech. You have to know each wrestler individually, his personality, his moods," Coleman explained. "Some guys will react to the rah-rah; others you have to leave alone."

Coleman is not the type of guy who acts recklessly. During his senior year of high school in Westbury, New York, he planned to attend one of the service academies. By December he had changed his mind and applied to Harvard because he wanted "something more than the military."

Coleman hasn't regretted it. He believes the atmosphere at Harvard enables one to find a healthy balance between sports, academics, and social life.

Proper Perspective

A balance? "Well it's true that sports are de-emphasized in the Ivy League. Harvard itself is not conducive to developing good athletic teams, but at least the sports are put into their proper perspective," he mused.

Since not too many people attend Harvard matches, wrestling doesn't offer the notoriety most athletes crave. "A wrestler's satisfaction." Coleman explained. "lies in the knowledge that he must succeed or fail on his own. There is no one to fall back on."

Coleman is satisfied with the team's performance (second place in the Ivy League) and he feels that the future in Harvard wrestling is promising. He is quick to credit the work of the coaches, John Lee and Bob Fehrs, for "really turning the program around in three years."

Something in Coleman's personable manner, soft voice, and quick smile doesn't fit into one's image of a wrestler-not mean enough perhaps.

Unaggressive

"That's my biggest problem. I've got good strength, coordination, and balance. But, basically, I'm just not an aggressive person," he said.

There is just one more challenge for Coleman to meet-the district tournament beginning March 13.

To the Nationals

If he does well there, he'll go to the Nationals. That is uppermost in his mind, but still he insists that all he wants to accomplish is to help Harvard place above the other Ivy League teams in the tournament.

Next year, Pat hopes to be studying in Boston, preferably at the Harvard Ed School. After that he's not sure, although he is aware of the fact that "marriage might complicate things a bit."

Coleman admits he'll miss wrestling. The Spartan existence; the wins; the losses; that time he missed the team flight back to Boston; ah, "that time after the banquet sophomore year . . . we got drunk . . . started throwing beer cans out of the window . . . then all of a sudden . . ."