Goliath Braces for David, Part 24
Naval Academy Aims to Upend St. John's in Croquet Rivalry

By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 23, 2006

The croquet match held every spring on the lawn of St. John's College in Annapolis is a perennial inside joke. Long ago, the commandant of the U.S. Naval Academy challenged a St. John's freshman to find an athletic contest the bookish, hirsute Johnnies could actually win. And win they have, virtually every year since 1983.

But with two surprise victories in the past five years, the academy's midshipmen are turning the tables on the annual St. John's-Naval Academy croquet match, also known as the Annapolis Cup, spoiling the joke. They're practicing -- with an actual coach -- and fielding players who have more than a few weeks' experience.

What's next? No more gin and tonics on the field?

"They just kind of got it in their heads that they were going to win," said Matt Mangold, a St. John's senior from Winfield, Kan., who is his team's imperial wicket, or captain.

Today marks the 24th time the tiny "great books" college has faced off against the mighty service academy across the street for a contest some call "chess on grass," although croquet may in fact be slower.

The match transforms the lawn along College Avenue into a sea of Gatsbyesque suits, pajama-striped shirts, ankle-length gowns, sun hats, parasols, champagne and wine by the box. Some years, play goes from lunchtime till dusk. The actual game, for many, is an afterthought.

"It's a party on the lawn. Calling it an athletic event is kind of a gross exaggeration," said Robert deMajistre, an applied mathematician at Johns Hopkins University who was imperial wicket at St. John's in 1987 and 1988.

The midshipmen, who gamely shrugged off nine consecutive defeats in the 1990s, lately have taken their croquet a lot more seriously. Navy brass had tired of losing. Win, the players were told, or the academy would no longer field a team.

Six years ago, the academy brought in Anne Morris, a tournament-level croquet master from Easton, Md., who had coached a team at Smith College. She got the mids proper equipment, replacing their handmade mallets, which tended to splinter in tournament play, with $120 professional models.

She sharpened their game, built upon a strategy every bit as conservative as their crisp, white letterman sweaters. They wait for their comparatively brash opponent to make a mistake and then pounce.

St. John's, in contrast, brings a three-pronged attack passed down from one imperial wicket to the next: practice hard, play all out, drink heavily and find new and creative ways to put the mids off their game.

Last year, the team took the field to the theme from the television show "The A-Team," with players dressed in matching headbands, short shorts and "Vote for Pedro" T-shirts from the movie "Napoleon Dynamite," a display calibrated to leave the mids ill at ease. Previous costumes, always top secret until game time, have ranged from Army camouflage to kilts.

The Johnnies also field a designated temptress, held in reserve for desperate moments, whose job it is to saunter over to the midshipmen with a winning smile and a tray of drinks. The mids, for their part, perennially vow to remain sober throughout the five-game match; they sometimes keep that pledge well into the second game.

The tradition began with a St. John's freshman named Kevin Heyburn. Leafing through old yearbooks in 1982, he found that the college had played Navy frequently in lacrosse and baseball in the early 1900s. St. John's had even beaten Navy a few times, although the last such occasion was in 1913, in baseball.

Returning from an Army-Navy football game one fall day that fall, Heyburn found himself walking behind Adm. Leon A. "Bud" Edney, the Academy commandant. Heyburn told the admiral what he'd read. Edney replied, "I wouldn't challenge us to any sport now."

Heyburn said he remembered there were some croquet sets at the college library, left there to encourage play on the front lawn. "So I thought, what about a croquet match?" This also gave Heyburn, the croquet correspondent at the college newspaper, something to write about.

The president of the St. John's student government issued a formal letter of challenge to the commandant. Edney passed it on to Mark Hagerott, a senior on his staff, who put up a note for volunteers. Out of 4,000 midshipmen, he got barely enough responses to field a team. The first match was in 1983.

"It was a little bit going out on a ledge to put together a Naval Academy croquet team," said Hagerott, a Rhodes scholar who was captain of the first Navy team. "In fact, there were some who thought it was something that midshipmen didn't do."

But academy leadership saw an opportunity. Not many years had passed since the Vietnam-era protests, a time when Johnnies were jeering at the midshipmen as they marched through town.

The early matches were played by inebriated amateurs on cheap backyard equipment. "I think we practiced once," Hagerott recalled. "The main thing was to show up."

Navy captured the cup in two of the first five years. Then the Johnnies established dominance, winning all but one of the next 13 tournaments.

A turning point came in 2001. That year, with their new coach and mallets that didn't break, the mids routed the overconfident St. John's players, who had downed gallons of beer, champagne and cocktails served up by the match mixologist. Since then, St. John's has won three times; Navy, once.

A scrimmage between the two teams last week brought a taste of what fans can expect at today's game at 1 p.m., rain or shine: arcane and unintelligible outbursts from players ("Are you dead on me?"), a cooler full of Budweiser and Red Stripe and lots of people staring intently at the grass.