IKE HIMOWITZ — SPRINT FOOTBALL

Recently senior offensive lineman Ike Himowitz of the sprint football team sat down with 'Prince' senior writer Sophia Hollander.

'Prince': Sprint football is a lesser known sport. What attracted you to it?

Ike Himowitz: I found out about it well before I was applying for colleges. I chose to come to Princeton because I could play football. I was looking at smaller schools and the coaches were all like, 'Eh, you might be a prospect in two or three years — if you grow.' So I looked at this as an absolutely fantastic opportunity. Anywhere else, even at a smaller D-III school, I'm just tiny at 5-8. A few of the heavyweights are that small but they all tend to be faster skill guys — even most of the receivers are going to be taller than that.

P: Were you frustrated not being able to play varsity football?

IH: I remember on a recruiting trip up to Williams — my father had played ball at Williams at around six foot, 220-230 pounds in college. And back when he was playing that was pretty big for a D-III school. Well, first of all, the guy on our tour who took us around was a football player and he said he was an offensive guard. The guy was probably 6-3, 240. He was a big guy. He introduced himself as some position of authority. He just towered over me.

And so, yeah, it was discouraging going around. I knew I wanted to play and it didn't seem like there were a whole lot of places I could play or play with any hope of seeing the field. And certainly I couldn't play at a school like Princeton which was much bigger than any of the other schools.

P: How did you become interested in football in the first place?

IH: I started late. I started my sophomore year of high school after my wrestling coach suggested it as something to during the fall. Would you like to talk about the differences between college and high school?

P: What were the differences between college and high school?

IH: In high school I was such a little guy that I was much faster than the big, fat, heavy guys I was playing against who weren't very good but used to take up space. I would just fire and commit my entire body weight to pushing them back some and using my speed. In college, there is a lot more skill and a lot more speed. It was a shock. All of a sudden everybody has skill. It's not a question of me firing forward with all my weight — it was about position blocking and technique. I really haven't gotten bigger or stronger. It really has been an issue of improving my actual game, not just improving my physical abilities.

P: Why did you choose football over wrestling?

IH: I actually wrestled for a year at Princeton and went to the Eastern regional championships in the 190-pound weight class, where there happened to be an opening on the team and the coach asked me to step in. I didn't weigh 190 at the time.

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I had been practicing with the team since the very end of football season. Wrestling had been cut in 1994 and has been making a strong comeback — as in the funding. They were practicing on the floors of Dillon where we had to roll in the mats on the floor, changing in a backwoods locker room where all the heat pipes are. It was a grungy little place. The team is only, maybe, 18 to 22 guys and it just so happened that I fit well into a weight class where they were weak. And I honestly got my ego handed to me a little bit. Or more than a little bit.

So, sophomore year I returned and I had neither the desire nor the skill to compete at that level. I was getting physically beat up after playing football and trying to wrestle.

P: Did playing one sport allow you to try different things on campus?

IH: I've since been in several plays, I've become an officer in my eating club. Because of the nature of our season it lets you do other things. You can always work it in if you want to be in a play or an officer or anything like that. We have a lot of guys involved in Athletes in Action.

P: Had you been in plays before?

IH: That was something I had chosen to do after I decided to stop wrestling. I had just reinjured my shoulder, which I had separated three times. I was just beat up and I was done.

That day I saw a production notice for "Henry IV" and I decided to try out. That was my acting debut. I was the guy who took a s**t in the woods. I was every little part there was. I was on-stage for probably about a third of the play and maybe a thousandth of the lines, but I really liked it.

It was sort of satisfying — something similar to athletics without necessarily taking the physical beating. I was also in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I was the wall. My wall was very akin to my s***tting in the woods. I seem to get the dirty parts. It was great. I've gotten to fight with swords on stage, run around like an idiot, dodge behind cellos. It was a very unique experience and because I'm not a heavyweight I can commit to other things.

P: How does this year's team compare to last year's?

IH: There's a much larger senior class, which provides a lot of experience that hasn't existed before. Every year it's been two or three seniors and they were usually captains. This year there's about 10 or 12 of us who are just everywhere and it makes a huge difference in team morale.

We can pick up the younger guys, correct their forms. We can be coaches on the field when the captains can't be. We've been there before, we know what it's like . . . I really like our chances against any team in the league. We had a rough time against Cornell, went up with three running backs and came back with none.

But we lost 16-13 in overtime and we almost did win with no running backs. We were using a linebacker as a running back. If we stay healthy, we are very capable of beating any Ivy league team and we can definitely compete with Army and Navy, which is something we haven't been able to do in the past.

P: How beat up were you after wrestling and football?

IH: Realize that you play with pain. Anybody who plays football is going to be bruised at some point. But after the season, trying to go into a fresh season of wrestling, I just got run down. At the end of the season in any contact sport you're going to be suffering all kinds of aches and bruises — generally not very serious, but they're nagging — particularly in a weight-controlled sport, where you're not able to take as good care of yourself as you'd like.

P: What is the weight requirement??

IH: You have to weigh 165 pounds the Wednesday before a game. A lot of the guys on the team are losing three, four, five pounds to play the day of weigh-ins. Three or four pounds is a normal workout, but nobody on the team who's anywhere near weight eats dessert. We eat grilled chicken with the best of them.

P: Is that awful?

IH: It's not fun. It's not that hard. You just do it.

P: What is your best memory playing at Princeton?

IH: Easily it was beating Navy sophomore year. We had 15 straight losses. We won in overtime in just a vicious battle. Everyone was jumping up and down and screaming and crying. I still can't look back at it and not smile. It's just one of those memories which is absolutely fantastic.

We'd beaten Navy maybe nine times in the history of the program. And it wasn't a fluke. Everything that needed to happen that game happened that game and I didn't stop smiling for like three weeks. The momentum carried us through another victory against Cornell making it the first time football had won two games in a row in I-don't-think-anybody-knows how long. It was just a fantastic feeling. That's why I play football every year. It's for a chance to experience that.