Old School New School

A meditation on dresswhites, cutoffs) andthe rules that matter

I STAND OUTSIDE THE FENCE of the varsity courts on a cold, gray morning in December, communing with ghosts. Slowly the snow melts away, the fog lifts slightly, and I see them trudging down from the gym do they call it the old gym, these days? Ucko or Woolworth in the lead, Oldenberg my buddies Magee and Delanis Coach K trailing, talking something over with Mark Harty (nicest guy you'd want to meet, Harty, a truly sweet guy). The light is soft and yellow and green, the air smells of warm, fresh earth. The team shuffles onto the courts. The broken fence-door clangs behind the coach. The pairings come naturally. Young Tesar and Young Mags, each with terrific talent and potential, face one another across the net, and they start to rally. I, with very little talent and less potential I who got lucky in the freshman tournament a couple autumns ago, and have been clinging to the bottom of the varsity ladder ever since will hit with Jimmy Delanis. This will be so because Jimmy, also, is a prince of a guy, and he will hit with me...for four long years. We'll be a doubles team for four years, too, under the theoretical assumption that my large forehand is a nice complement to Jimmy's steadier game. We do okay in doubles, eventually rising to number four on the ladder, because Jimmy's as patient as he is steady, and never ruffles when my leaky play threatens to sink us.

The plock-plock of ball off gutstrings echoes around the Varsity Courts, as the solid wooden rackets Kramers, Maxplis, no other models schuss through the air. The balls land, kick the red clay, and bounce up high. We wallop them back; we don't even have to bend our knees.

That's how it looks, smells, and sounds to me on this cold, gray morning in December 1997.

Ah, but can we see the negative of that image?

My hair is long and Magee's is longer. We've all got these ratty T-shirts; some of our tennis shorts are cutoffs. Our disheveled, clay-stained socks are various hues underneath blue, black, and yellow as well as white. There are black sneakers. Some of the guys are really playing with Arthur Ashe rackets by Head, or those Jimmy Connors metal jobs by Wilson. Not a pretty picture.

Memory's fanny. Funnier still or at least odder is this ever-evolving, never-evolving idea of Old School, particularly as it applies to Old School Sports.

We saw ourselves in the early '70s as anything but Old School. I was reporting to tennis practice fresh from meetings in Dartmouth Hall, where we planned various protests against Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos whichever offensive was last or next. I'm sure the impression that the athletes of Dartmouth at the time were not Old Schoolers was shared, back then, by any members of the class of Ought-Eight who might've caught our act. (Well, maybe the football team had dispensation with alums. They could tuck their hair under their helmets, so who knew? And for another thing, they won all the time. That buys a bundle of alumni goodwill.)

Anyway, if you had accused us of being Old School back then, we would've taken some kind of umbrage, I can assure you. It was bad enough that our chosen game was an Old School kind of game. We were none too proud of that. All we could say to ourselves was, well, at least it's not lacrosse. It s not golf.

On this cold December day, I take a last deep look at the Varsity Courts, carpeted with early snow. I wonder what they're called now. The Berry Sports Complex Courts? The Wheelock Street Courts? The varsity doesn't play here anymore, and Dartmouth's no longer a clay-court school. I wonder if these four courts, at least, are still clay.

Coach Kenfield had a couple of rules that, from today's vantage, look like Old School rules. If you can't call it, it's in. If you'refoot-faulting, stop it. If I see you cheating, I'll yank you. Coach used to smoke a pipe, bless him, all the time while coaching and sometimes while hitting the ball. I seem to remember the Yale coach favored a pipe too, and during a Green-Blue match the Varsity Courts would be aromatic with smoke. I'd bet that Yale coach had rules about how the lines were called, and I'd bet they were precisely the same as Coach K's. Because while we were not Old Schoolers, those two were most definitely Old School tennis coaches. The league was full of them when we arrived: tweedy gentleman who valued ground strokes as well as first serves, and were remiss to cut players who were trying. We alums always say these days that we wouldn't be admitted to the new Dartmouth, and then we go "heh, heh," figuring it's a nice, self-deprecating joke that we know is nonsense. We figure we could get in any day, lick anyone. But I tell you with certainty: No way, no how do I hang around the Varsity Courts for four years in the '90s with my ragtag game. Kenfield was my protector, for whatever reasons. I know the current coach, Chuck Kinyon and I know him to be a good man and true, but he couldn't afford to take me on.

I'm thinking all this over as I stroll past the Berry Sports Complex on this gray day, and come to Leverone Field House. I can't see what kind of indoor courts they have there now, because the Upper Valley has changed greatly and, on this Sunday, a huge Christmas Crafts Fair has encamped in Leverone, luring shoppers from towns around. Hey, why let all the dough go to Quechee or Woodstock? Why indeed.

When I was a kid in Massachusetts, indoor tennis was a strange and wonderful thing an idea more than a functional reality, like walking on the moon. Barry Barrows's dad had a membership at the Acton Bubble (as we knew it) and a couple of times Barry invited me to hit inside the Bubble. A fantastic experience, playing in the Bubble. And then I got to Dartmouth, and indoor tennis meant a rubber mat with lines painted on, laid over the dirt in Leverone. Better than the Bubble.

I'm sounding Old Schooly again.

Or am I? With Kenfield in the equation, things get interesting.

Leverone must have seemed like the Hubble Telescope to him when he first saw it, but when he was a kid I'll bet there were coaches still wearing white ducks to practice, and when they were kids they probably hadn't played with any other kids except their colleagues from private schools and clubs. And now, on Leverone's sign, the "F" and the "I" are missing from "FIELD HOUSE," and the joint's looking old. The surface of the courts beneath the Crafts Fair could be titanium, for all it matters. The joint's still old.

I'm getting confused. Or am I?

There used to be a trophy in Coach K's office that was to be awarded to the first varsity team to beat Princeton. It had been there since Ought-Eight, I figured. It was plenty dusty, and it sure wasn't claimed by a Dartmouth team while I was there. Chuck Kinyon's teams beat Princeton with some regularity these days, and Harvard, too. They win the league now and again, a notion as unthinkable in our day as Mars exploration. They're good; they're very, very good. I've seen them.

And you know what they look like to me? Old School. They've got these crisp, $40 haircuts Walt and Ernie's No Shaves had nothing to do with these and they dress in white. They play on hardcourts, so they never get really grungy. They look like Kramer the man, not the racket except they've got bigger weapons in their hands. They look to this erstwhile '70s dirtbag like Old Schoolers with space-age stuff.

But also, they seem to be exceedingly good kids. They seem like fresher-faced Mark Hartys, and I'll bet they call the lines fair. They seem to love tennis. They seem like the types who couldn't pull themselves away from the game if they tried, even if there were a war on and things to be protested.

I'm back at the Varsity Courts now, and I'm imagining these are the new Freshman Courts, which they well might be, for all I know. The class of 2001 team is practicing their shrouds are practicing, in any event and one of them glances over, wondering who the geezer is, the Old Schooler beyond the fence. But now I've thought things through, and I realize: Kid, you're me. First, you have a lousy backhand. But also: We're always New School in our minds, and those on either side of us are not. We're always 20 years old whether we're 18 or 80 and everyone else is 95.

We're all the same the same school, the same squad, the same player. The rules that matter call 'em fair, no foot-faulting don't change. They're Kenfield's rules and Kinyon's. One rule maintains above others: Let's beat Harvard.

To paraphrase a lyric that used to blare from Heorot's windows across the street from the Varsity Courts back when I was trying to concentrate on a tennis ball: Meet the new school, same as the old school. That was from the Who's Next album. Who indeed. Teammates, certainly.

It's starting to snow. Chilly. I'm heading for the Inn.

The 1973 tennis team volleyed through the age of Aquarius.

ROBERT SULLIVAN '75 was good enough to earn a varsity letter intennis, not quite good enough to make the official team photo.