I couldn't wait to go home and announce that I would be the hockey beat writer for the Harvard Crimson. I've done that so many times during my four years here-press box at the Fleet Center for the Beanpot, road trips as far as Omaha and Colorado Springs. All the time with hockey culminated in my election as co-Sports Editor along with the great William Bohlen.

I covered football too, even wrote a column once calling for Harvard to reconsider coach Tim Murphy's tenure, but, as strange as it was for a kid from North Jersey who spent his summers and winters playing either baseball or basketball, hockey was the sport of the household, and so naturally is was my sport here too.

The press box soon became a second home. I had my own seat and the same people would be on my right and left every game. It was my domain and I immersed myself in the world of Harvard hockey, considering it my duty to learn as much of the tradition and impart that back to the school.

I soon saw in the eyes of the people on the ice just what it meant to don a crimson jersey. The most vivid lesson came at the program's lowest moment in my career here, after Harvard had just been swept at home before Christmas break in 1998 to fall 0-8-1 in ECAC play. I consider it the finest back-to-back interviews I have ever done as a reporter.

First the captain, current Carolina Hurricane Craig Adams '99 came in and tried to keep a stiff upper lip. I asked the first question and kept following up. To my surprise, the pros from the Boston Globe and Herald simply let me do all the talking-completely satisfied in the quotes they were getting. The rest of the Crimson tried to skirt the media that night. Just when I thought I would have to make do with Adams, then-sophomore defenseman Graham Morrell, a tough nosed kid from Natick who has sadly been injured far too often in his career, volunteered himself.

He not only had heard the stories, but as a local he had seen them play on the ice. His eyes showed nothing but pain as he truly understood the depths the program had sunk. Here I was, his classmate, sticking a tape recorder at him trying to elicit more heart-breaking remarks.

Not all Crimson lore happens on the ice. I staked my small piece of Harvard lore in a little column about Cornell the following year, for the record, I still hate the Lynah faithful.