Saba-Zilla: Tough Seasons Leave Some Out In The Cold

This academic year has almost come to a close, and I have had the opportunity to see Harvard athletics and student-athletes from several angles.

I would like to take this chance to reflect back on one team, its season, and what it meant to write about it with honesty.

Seeing the Harvard women's swimming and diving team compete and reporting on its successes for The Crimson has been an opportunity and a privilege.

The reason I comped The Crimson was so that I could cover the women's swimming and diving team. I hoped that I could put my knowledge of the sport to good use and hopefully bring recognition to a great group of athletes.

Picking up a beat and covering a team can be a challenge, but it can be rewarding too. It is fun to get to know a team, its coaches and the dynamics of the group that contribute to its performance.

At the same time, it is a great challenge when you play the same sport as the team you are covering, when you practice at the same facility and have many friendships and acquaintances that overlap with your "beat".

At a Crimson Sports meeting, it's hard to pitch a swimmer as athlete of the week: you look biased and self concerned. It is hard not to over emphasize the small successes by individuals that to an outsider might appear insignificant or meaningless. I saw what it took to get there for these athletes, and I realize how important those achievements were.

I admire and respect women's swimming and its coaches, and it is hard to see the team perform below expectations. It was hard to report when the women lost a meet, and it was even more difficult to analyze a poor performance or an upsetting (and surprising) loss.

But honestly, I didn't mind; being objective and reporting the facts and adding your two cents is never easy, nor should it be. Looking back, I took pride in my articles and had fun doing interviews. I pushed my editors for space and made an effort to reward these women.

Although I may have associations with the female swimmers, divers, and their coaches, I remain an outsider. I'll never be on the team or be in the locker room before finals on the third day of a championship meet.

I do know this: people swam fast and people dove well. However, the team's ranking dropped, and the Crimson had a mediocre record. It was a mixed bag.

Captain Pia Chock performed at a level above the rest the entire season. She swam best times and outpaced most of the conference up until the Ivy Championships. She'll leave Eliot House and Blodgett Pool with her head held high, and don't be surprise if her fastest swimming is yet to come.

It took some time, but others followed Chock's lead. Sophomore Jessi Walter backstroked her way within inches of two varsity records, and seniors such as Lillian Brown, Angie Peluse, and Camila McLean continued to improve on three years of already stellar performances.

It seems like others are just on their way back: Janna McDougall, Anna Fraser, and departing captain Ali Shipley showed that in no way were they going to give up on a season or on a career because of a slump or an injury. These women made it happen.

The hardest part of writing these articles was seeing girls miss out. Seeing Ivy titlest Lovisa Gustafsson miss most of her season because of sickness, and bearing witness to the rocky return of sophomore sensation Arianne Cohen. These girls specifically know what it is to be a hardcore competitor, to suffer though the Olympic-style preparation they received in high school and the rigor they met in Cambridge.

The first day of freshmen move-in, one and a half years ago, I was down at the pool working out. At about noon on that first Saturday most students are moving their bags into their rooms. They're doing lunch in the square and shaking hands, lots of hands.

Lovisa and Arianne were already pushing their bodies to the limit at Blodgett, swimming with the guys and ready to take the league by storm.

This pair, just like a lot of athletes on the Crimson who have gone unmentioned but not unnoticed, deserve better than what they got this season. Luck befalls us in the worst ways sometimes-just ask the handfuls of Crimson athletes who have been injured this year alone.

Results don't always show the body of work. Of course there has to be accountability with respect to work ethic and workout attendance, but sometimes things come together and sometimes they don't. I am looking forward to better news next year, and I hope I'll be afforded the same opportunity to tell you about it in 2002.

I got to ask the team questions, watch them, cheer them on, and occasionally work out with them. It's a great thing to see people you grow to care about succeed, and it is extremely difficult to report on the tough times, especially when you are connected to the process.