This entry is written by Carl Ehrlich, a football student-athlete at Harvard. Check out Carl's previous blogs: Playing Under the Lights, Summer Dogs , R.I.C.E., A tale of two lives and Remembering recruiting.

Last Tuesday, as every eligible American should have, I voted.

Many Americans might find the election and their personal voting decision to be a private matter. As for me, I feel as though my vote is far too important of a topic to "let it shine under a bushel basket."

Those who know me and my stance on the issues will say that I made up my mind before the election even started. But I just knew in my heart of hearts what the right choice was for myself and for my country. Putting all accolades and obvious collegiate bias (a Harvard man!) aside, I looked deep into the candidates and deeper into myself to determine whom I would put my vote behind.

While a GoCrimson blog endorsement might not carry much weight on a national level, I feel as though my candidate is ready to lead this country and I would be remiss if I didn't do everything I could to help him get elected. That is why I'm officially supporting Mike Fucito for the Lowe's Senior CLASS MVP.

Fucito is a senior on the men's soccer team who is having a great season and epitomizes the "classroom, character, community, and competition" that the award looks to recognize. It's a shame the award doesn't recognize the ability to pass for Dustin Pedroia, because then it would be no contest.

Make sure to log onto the website (http://www.seniorclassaward.com/vote/sport/menssoccer/?KEY=&DB_OEM_ID=9000&DB_LANG=&IN_SUBSCRIBER_CONTENT=) and cast your vote for Harvard's own.

Yes we can.

Election Day came and went last week (with a patriotically high number of absentee ballots mailed by Harvard Football players), and while the significance of the results were not wasted on the team, the "holiday" aspect of it was. Talking to my mom, a school teacher who had off school for Election Day, she began to ask how I was putting my Election Day to best use before catching herself.

C'mon Mom, you know better. There's no crying in baseball, and there are no holidays in football. Not traditional ones, anyways. Because of the demands of our schedules, our workouts don't match up well to the federal holiday calendar. The consummate football player would respond that everyday is a holiday because we get to play the sport we love, but I'll (for the sake of the non-football playing reader of course) operate on the more functional, commonplace definition of a holiday as a day off.

But in lieu of traditional holidays, we on the football team have created our own. During the offseason, we refer to our workout-less Wednesdays as "Mini-weekends" and the actual weekends then become "mini-vacations."

Our annual Media Day, held each August, is always circled on the calendar during preseason, and although it's not a day off, The Game is the most important day of the year to many in the Harvard Football family.

Working backwards, a few examples of traditional holidays...

I spent "Veteran's Day" on Tuesday icing down the injuries that I had accumulated during my service on the gridiron.

On Election Day I "elected" to wake up at 5:45 to get a lift in.

We spent all of Halloween driving to Dartmouth and preparing for the game. Matt Hanson wore the scariest looking suit and tie combo I've ever seen

On September 1st I was in the midst of camp and had two practices, bringing a whole new meaning to "Labor Day."

On the Fourth of July I celebrated my dependence. We did actually get workouts off for this day but the next week's conditioning loomed over my head so I got an extra run in.

Thought you were getting a day off for a cheap holiday? April Fools!

Season update: While I thought this would be a fun topic to write on, there isn't a player on the team that would want to be anywhere else in the world right now than down at the field house. We're in a two-game season for the ivy-league championship and play at Penn this week in a matchup of first place teams. Even if Christmas was tomorrow I'm not sure anyone on the team would notice.