When the Ivy League presidents decided last summer to limit practice time by requiring all varsity sports to take seven weeks off during the year, they thought they were making athletes’ lives more balanced.

Requiring seven weeks of “dead time” would help curb the increasing intensity of athletics and restore focus on the Ivy League’s academic mission, the thinking went.

But most Ivy League athletes who compete at the national level say the new rule is discriminatory and seriously cripples their competitiveness against non-Ivy schools—and they are pushing for its repeal at the Dec. 10 presidents’ meeting, when the presidents are slated to review the ruling.

Under the rule, for seven weeks the hockey team can’t book ice at Bright, the basketball team can’t scrimmage at Lavietes and the soccer team can’t run drills on Ohiri, even if the coach is not present. Teams also cannot arrange sessions with conditioning coaches.

Though they have not coordinated across different sports, many Harvard athletes are protesting the rule or finding ways to circumvent it.

“We’ll do everything we possibly can to work around it,” said Kenneth J. Smith ’04, a defenseman for the varsity hockey team and a draft pick of the Edmonton Oilers. “I can’t imagine it’s helping anyone.”

Crippled Competitiveness?

The rule’s effects vary by sport—some teams are relatively unaffected while others say their competitiveness is jeopardized.

Track, for instance, will be unaffected by the ruling because indoor and outdoor track are considered separate sports. So the outdoor track season can be considered time off from the indoor season, and vice versa.

Fall sports such as field hockey and football will also not be significantly affected because their seasons end early enough to conveniently fit a seven week rest period between the fall competitive season and spring scrimmaging.

But coaches of other sports say their teams will be hurt by the ruling.

Men’s basketball coach Frank Sullivan says off-season training, which will be considerably shorter if the ruling remains in place, is crucial in developing individual skills.

“The growth curve on some of the players’ individual games will be slowed,” he writes in an e-mail.

The team’s rest period is currently slotted to take place the final seven weeks of the spring semester.

He adds that training during that time period, without the presence of graduating seniors, allows “for the initial stages of team identity to emerge before the summer, and we’ll lose that building block as well.”