The Harvard men’s basketball team gets an off-court education
When Harvard men’s basketball coach Tommy Amaker saw his team’s schedule over the semester break and realized they had a day off in Atlanta, he quickly decided to make it count. That’s how, after a hard-fought win, Crimson basketball players found themselves shaking hands with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and touring some of Atlanta’s historic Civil Rights sites, including the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King Jr. was co-pastor with his father. The experience, while exciting and humbling for players, is part of a larger, more important effort by their coach to educate them beyond the basketball court. “That’s what it’s all about,” said Amaker, Harvard’s winningest coach in program history. “It’s more meaningful to call myself a teacher and a leader than a coach. I know ‘coach’ encompasses those things, but it’s bigger than me coaching basketball. We’re always trying to connect different pieces that can have our kids embrace...