In a society where people brag about their single-minded dedication to one sport, one instrument or one subject since childhood, it can be a challenge to promote well-roundedness.

Like many Division III schools, Williams College is one such place where multiple talents are sought and rewarded. But unlike many other colleges and universities in the country, Williams also has achieved exceptional success -- year after year -- in both the classroom and on the athletics field.

In the last 10 years, Williams' academic reputation has been ranked at the top among the nation's liberal arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report. Also, in the past seven years, Williams has won six of the Division III Sears Directors' Cup titles, an award presented by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics to the best overall collegiate athletics programs -- as determined by national championship finishes -- in the country.

That level of consistent dual success, particularly for a Division III college with only a little more than 2,000 students in a rural setting in the Berkshires of northwestern Massachusetts, is significant.

The athletics success may be even more remarkable considering that Williams is a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), which has no postseason competition in football and no competition or practice in the nontraditional season in any sport. Also, only 24 percent of the prospective students who apply are admitted, and the average SAT score is said to be in the 1500 range.

Plus, the mascot is a purple cow.

A tradition of success

The Ephs, so named for Colonel Ephraim Williams, the man who bequeathed funds in 1755 leading to the college's founding in 1793, accumulated an NCAA Division III record this year with 989 points in the Sears competition, breaking their own record of 897.5.

To accomplish that, 18 of the Ephs' 31 varsity teams finished in the top 20 in the nation. The Ephs (pronounced "eefs," with a long "e") won national championships in men's tennis, women's tennis and women's rowing. Five other teams recorded top-10 finishes. Williams also took home 11 NESCAC championships this year, and it also did well in its Little Three conference, an intense rivalry with Amherst College and Wesleyan University (Connecticut), in which it won 22 titles this year.

This was the second consecutive year for national titles in both men's and women's tennis, with the women's team becoming the first in the 21-year history of the event to repeat as champions. The men's team took home its third title in four years.

If this kind of success had been a recent phenomenon, it might be easier to explain away as good fortune or the work of a few good coaches. But the success is pervasive throughout the athletics department, and it's been that way as long as anyone can remember.

"Williams has always been good," said Dave Johnson, Williams' coach of men's tennis and squash. "Since the advent of co-education (in 1970), we've had a tradition of athletics excellence. Our tradition of winning is not a five-year thing."

And then there's the academics. Williams has been no lower than fourth among liberal arts colleges in academic rankings from 1991 to 2001.

People involved in athletics are known to be a competitive bunch, and over the years many have wondered how Williams does it.

John Biddiscombe, athletics director at Wesleyan (Connecticut), has met the Ephs in Little Three competition and in the NESCAC.

"The unique thing about Williams is the ethos of the environment there. The culture supports a very active integration of athletics and all other parts of campus life, including academics. They have excellent resources, outstanding facilities, a nationally renowned reputation for success and also, the student-athletes feel supported there," Biddiscombe said.

Participation is key

There's no denying that things are just different at Williams. According to the school's public affairs department, about 40 percent of Williams' students participate in intercollegiate sports, with 34 percent of the student body participating at the varsity level. There are 31 varsity teams (16 men's and 15 women's teams), 16 junior varsity teams (eight men's and eight women's), eight club sport teams and 11 intramural sports.

Sports -- whether intercollegiate athletics, broom ball (a popular form of ice hockey with a household broom) or simply the camping trips that serve as freshman orientations -- are one of the ways the students at Williams socialize and develop bonds with each other.

A priority is placed on participation, and Williams seems to attract people who like to take part, even if they don't start.

Ralph White, the men's and women's track and field coach for the past two years, has experienced times when 100 people showed up to participate.

"You don't have to be a star to make a team here," he said. "The opportunity to participate is given to every student."

Williams coaches also are given additional support in the form of more assistant coaches when their teams prove popular. "(More student-athletes) are welcome as long as they bust their butts," White said. "That willingness to include so many kids is not something I ever saw on the Division I level."

A former Division I coach, White built the track program at George Mason University and also served as head track coach at Southern Methodist University.

White thinks Williams is the good life for a coach. Coaches are faculty members, and they are not allowed to recruit off campus. It has allowed him to spend more time coaching some highly motivated and competitive student-athletes and also spend more time with his family.

"I don't go on the road to recruit, but this school attracts a lot of students and we can make a lot of phone calls and e-mails," White said. "The hard part is getting the kids with the 1500 SATs. Am I going to get any future Olympians here? No, I've done that and I'm done with that. But I am going to get a heck of a lot of doctors, lawyers and just great individuals. I think I probably have the best job in the country."

White also noted that the overall student body is relatively diverse for a liberal arts school -- with a U.S. ethnic minority enrollment of 25 percent -- another factor he counts in recruiting.

"As far as the facilities go, I think some of them are a little antiquated, but it's not the brick and mortar that gets the job done. It's the people -- the administrators, the coaches and the student-athletes," White said.

White also points out that Williams has great conference competition every year that challenges the Ephs, and that winning the Sears Cup is not a goal that's really discussed.

"I don't know that we've ever called a meeting of the athletics department where we sat around and said, 'We need to win the Sears Cup this year.' Instead, our objective is to do the best we can, give student-athletes a great experience and the rest will fall in place."

Many interests

In addition to the high percentage of students who participate in sports, Williams has some other factors that contribute to its uniqueness. It abolished fraternities in 1962, and it became coeducational in 1970 (it previously was all male). It has a period each weekday from 4 to 6 p.m. called "Division of the Day." That's a time when athletics and other activities, such as theater or dance, hold practice or meetings.

"I think this is a successful place no matter how you look at it," said Harry Sheehy, Williams' athletics director for the past two years. "There's an incredible amount of talent here, whether you're looking at music, theater, dance or sports."

Before taking the athletics director post, Sheehy coached men's basketball at Williams for 17 years. He's also a Williams grad, class of 1975.

Sheehy thinks one of the unique aspects of Williams has to do with its support and encouragement of multisport student-athletes. He points to Michael Masters, a three-time all-American soccer player for Williams who also wanted to play on the basketball team.

"I think he could have gone a lot of places to play soccer, but he came here because he could also play basketball," Sheehy said. "Coaches here support that and help people work with it," he said, noting that the absence of nontraditional-season play helped in that regard.

Sheehy believes that athletics, along with dance, theater, music and other activities at Williams help contribute to the unique education the students receive.

"I prefer to call all those things co-curricular rather than extracurricular because I think they are a part of the educational experience," he said. "The athletics experience here is certainly educational in nature. It's not academic, but it's definitely educational and cannot be replicated in a classroom."

That commitment to academics is reflected in Williams' membership in the NESCAC, which typically has the shortest seasons and the most restrictions, all intended to protect class time and better enable the balance between athletics and academics.

While some might consider the NESCAC restriction on postseason football a detriment, it's worked out well for Williams and its Little Three counterparts. Each of the school's last two games are against Little Three rivals. The Little Three rivalry, which dates back to 1910, makes for quite a bit of excitement.

"They're really like bowl games for us," Sheehy said. "We typically get 3,000 or 4,000 fans for a football game, but last year we got between 12,000 and 15,000 for the Amherst game."

The three schools broadcast the games on television to alumni groups across the country, further adding to the excitement. But come November 10, the season is over.

"For our two-sport athletes, participation in the (football) postseason just doesn't make sense. And for our kids in the sport of football, participating in the national tournament would almost be anticlimactic," Sheehy said.

Johnson, who has led the Ephs in men's tennis and squash since 1989, also is a Williams grad, from the class of 1971, who finds himself attracting Division I level athletes to Williams.

"My only disconnect as a Division III coach in recruiting Division I-level kids is reminding them that they will play far fewer games here than they would in the Ivy League," he said. "And generally, the kids who come to Williams have decided that they have played enough junior tennis. Many of them come because they are excited to be able to do other things as well."

Julie Greenwood, the women's tennis and squash coach and a 1996 grad, said Williams is a school whose athletics program is built around the multisport ideal and well-roundedness.

"There's something about the nature of our idyllic setting in the mountains that appeals to kids who want to do a lot of different things and do them well," she said. "For any coach who really believes in coaching as an educational vehicle, there's no better place to work."

Seven Williams student-athletes have won Rhodes Scholarships since 1980 when Karon Walker, a swimming student-athlete became the first Williams woman to win one. The most recent was Jason Stanley, an ice hockey and track and field student-athlete, in 2000.

Another reflection of academic success -- grade-point average -- has been a spot for Williams student-athletes to shine. Though the college doesn't release averages any more, two years ago it found that the cumulative grade-point average for female student-athletes was 3.29, higher than the GPA for the overall student body. The cumulative GPA for all male athletes was 3.12, still a number many athletics departments across the country envy.

Williams of the future?

Though the academic success at Williams is indisputable, the high level of athletics participation has brought recent internal study of the impact of athletics on campus. The study -- perhaps triggered by the publication of the controversial book, "The Game of Life" by William Bowen and James Shulman, which questioned the effects of sports on elite colleges -- has tried to examine both the good and bad of athletics at Williams.

It's an issue still under review, though Williams did decide to move to a system where only 66 athletics "tips," rather than the previous 72, are allowed. Those tips are admissions slots or "athlete-admits" that permit coaches to designate athletes with good, but perhaps not exceptional, academic records for admission.

Sheehy said that 66 tips, spread over 31 varsity teams, are not likely to either elevate the athletics program to a great degree nor adversely affect the overall academic ranking of a 2,000-student campus.

Greenwood, who also teaches a physical education class and serves as an advisor to first-year students, served on the ad hoc group that undertook the study, and she remains convinced that athletics brings a wealth of benefits to Williams.

"It's a special place, partly because of the athletics, but also because of the highly motivated and active people who are drawn here," she said.

Representatives from other schools have visited Williams to see if they can replicate their athletics and academic success, a notion that Wesleyan's Biddiscombe thinks is pure folly.

"It's just a unique place. You can't analyze it, and it's a set of ingredients that is very difficult to produce," he said. "It's a combination of things -- it's resources, alumni support and also, perhaps most importantly, tradition. It's hard to establish new tradition and make it meaningful. Any way you look at it, it's hard to recreate that atmosphere anywhere."