Greg Gicewicz '89-'90 knew he could not give up football.

The 1988 season was difficult. Harvard finished second to last in the Ivy League standings with a 2-5 record.

But Gicewicz, the team's middle guard, wanted another chance. He knew if he took the spring semester off, he would have another semester of eligibility. He would get to play in the 1989 Crimson campaign.

"I'd been thinking about it throughout the football season," Gicewicz says. "As the year went on, it became automatic that, yes, if there was any way I could continue playing football, I would do that."

"After practice and after games, I said, 'I'm really not ready to give this up yet,'" he says.

He consulted with his parents and coaches and decided after the Harvard-Yale game in late November that he would take the next semester off and return next year to the Crimson line-up.

A week later, Gicewicz's teammates voted him the 1989 Harvard football captain.

Gicewicz, who will graduate in the spring of 1990, is unusual among Harvard athletes because he decided to postone his education in order to continue his athletic career. But his devotion to the game he loves is typical of Harvard athletes.

Still, this devotion must be balanced with an even keener concern--academics. Harvard athletes lead a difficult double life. They have two full-time jobs, one in the classroom and one on the field.

The pressures of being both a student and an athlete can be trying at times, athletes say. Hard practices and long road trips make studying difficult. Likewise, classes occasionally conflict with practices, making it hard to perform at peak level in games, athletes say.

Some Harvard athletes have suffered under the strain of the duel committment to athletics and academics. Overburdened, some athletes voluntarily quit their sports. Others are forced to do so by the Administrative Board, Harvard's chief disciplinary body. But for most athletes at Harvard, the double life is manageable.

Harvard coaches, on the other hand, are faced with the job of winning games at a school which stresses academics. These coaches say the obstacles--juggling practice schedules to fit athletes' academic calendars and long layoffs during exam periods--present difficult but not insurmountable challenges.

The essential problem for athletes is time. Some Harvard athletes spend as many as 50 hours a week on their sports during the season. A football player, for instance, must not only go to practices and games but also attend weight-training sessions and view films of opposing teams.

"I think it's tough in the fall when I practice and I'm on the field 50 hours a week," running back Jim Reidy '90 says. "You go in at 2 [p.m.] and you don't get back home until 9. I'm too exhausted to study. So I try and catch up on the weekends."

"The biggest thing is you plain get tired," soccer Captain Robert Bonnie '89 says. "You come home from practice and want to relax, but you know you need to work. You try to study and you fall asleep."