Brady Throws His Way Into Stardom

Awake at 9:15 a.m. Into the shower, breakfast and coffee, off to class at 11 a.m. Return to Eliot House. Hang with friends, go to lunch, check e-mail.

It’s now 2:30 p.m., and up to this point, it’s an average day for any Harvard student.

But for senior Jack Brady, that’s when everything changes.

Brady walks across the river, where, as captain of the Crimson track and field team, he arrives at practice early to speak with his coach about the day’s events.

Once his teammates arrive, it’s time for a quick warmup of stretching, running, and different agility exercises. And then  after that, Brady’s ready to go.

“He’s probably the most committed person I’ve ever known,” says Brady’s girlfriend, Molly Boyle ’08, a former Harvard track captain herself.

“He spends most of his free time looking up videos of new techniques, videos of the best athletes. He can tell you who the best athletes in high school, college, and the pros are...[and] he’s always on blogs and message boards looking up what’s new in the sport.”

Today, on a cold February afternoon, he practices the weight throw—and all the footwork and technique vital to its success—for an hour and a half. That means spinning around four times to gather strength and then throwing a 35-pound ball attached by a chain to a metal handle that Brady holds.

Then it’s off to the weight room for an hour and 15 minutes, followed by the occasional ice bath (which he calls the “horrible part of being an athlete.”)

It’s now 6:30 p.m.

Not such a normal day anymore.

It’s a routine Brady’s been accustomed to since the seventh grade, when he first got into track and field.

But during those years, he wasn’t focused on his throwing. The events he was most interested in were the triple jump and the long jump.

“I love to brag about how great of a middle school jumper I was,” Brady says.

Towards the end of seventh grade he picked up a shotput—a 16-pound ball that is thrown from the neck—for the first time.

By the time he entered high school, Brady was six-foot-five, and his size put an abrupt end to his jumping career.

He began to focus more on throwing the shot and the discus. His junior year in high school, he finished in the top 10 in Illinois state track meets in the shotput and the disc throw, earning all-state recognition.

Brady began to think about possibly being recruited to play the sport in college, and for the academically-minded athlete, the Ivy League made sense.

He sent former Crimson throws coach Paul Turner a letter expressing his interest in the program, and when he applied to Harvard early action, he was accepted. The small-town, Midwestern boy was overjoyed.

“Nobody from where I live goes to Harvard,” he says.

But then there was football, which he also excelled at as a defensive lineman—so much so that he had full scholarship offers from Division I schools such as Northern Illinois, Miami of Ohio, and Central Michigan sitting on the table.

Though it was tough to turn down the chance to play Division I football on a free ride, he immediately called the programs and told them he was going Ivy.

“I understood there was a large difference between Northern Illinois and Harvard,” he says. “Now that I’m here, I could never understand turning this down.”

When he arrived as a freshman, he tried to do what few at Harvard have done—be a multisport athlete.

That meant that the Monday immediately following The Game, Brady was off to track practice and competed in his first meet the following week.

Despite the exhausting schedule, Brady truly enjoyed playing both sports.

He eagerly looked forward to his freshman summer, when he would be going to England for three weeks to participate in the Harvard/Yale vs. Oxford/Cambridge meet–the oldest continuous international amateur athletic event in the world.

It was an event he had been looking forward to for a while. But then, tragedy struck.

The day before his plane was set to leave, Coach Turner passed away.

“It was very difficult,” he says. “You just tried to wipe it out as much as possible. [But] our head coach had to leave England to go to his funeral...it was a constant reminder. There were lots of “cheers to Paul” chants, and we were thinking about him a lot.”

The team was victorious in its coach’s honor, winning 14 of 20 events. Yet Turner’s passing remained on Brady’s mind.

“It made me reevaluate, made me think,” Brady says. “My freshman year was a little bit crazy, [and I thought], if I’m going to spend the next three years of my life here, what do I really want to be doing? At the end of the day, it came down to the fact that I really wanted to be involved in the track program.”

Despite his love for both sports, the exhaustion of his routine and the hit that his grades were taking made the hassle not worth it.

He knew he had to quit football.

Though today he has no regrets about that decision, there’s always that slight feeling of nostalgia every time he walks past Harvard Stadium.

“I miss it,” he admits. “Games were so much fun. I miss hitting people and getting hit. I still watch tons of football, eat it up. I love the sport.”

Yet his love for track and field soared to even greater heights as it presented new challenges.

Though he had focused on the shotput and the disc throw in high school, he had only competed in the weight throw during his first year at Harvard—a decision Brady wasn’t happy about.

“I hated it,” he says. “I threw it like 12 meters, which is not good. I was embarrased.”

His sophomore year, his new coach, Catherine Grace Erickson—who coached an NCAA-record holder in the weight throw—encouraged him to keep working at the event.

Erickson’s experience immediately appealed to Brady.

“I think it was a little difficult for him, when he started out, to really understand what impact he could have competing in the weight three years down the line, because he didn’t have much experience with it,” Erickson says. “It’s not something as easy as picking up a football and just throwing it; it’s a very unnatural event.”

By his junior year, Brady was finally buying into her advice.

“I kept telling him to trust the process, stay calm, and try to pick up one thing every day,” she says. “[I told him] by the end, you’re going to be in good shape...[and] that the weight and hammer would help his athleticism in the other events, because there’s a lot of crossover.”

The weight and hammer throws are now his favorite events—the major difference being that the hammer is thrown outdoors, the weight indoors.

He still loves the challenge the shotput provides and has also improved in the discus–so much so that his throw of 50.17 meters last year placed him 10th on Harvard’s all-time list.

“They compete for my heart a little bit,” Brady admits.

In 2009, he qualified for the IC4A Outdoor Track and Field Championship in all three heavy throw events (the shotput, discus, and hammer throw), a rare feat considering most competitors don’t do all three at once.

Brady’s heart is fully with track and field, both now and in the future.

“I want to keep training, to see where this hammer thing takes me,” he says. “I want to play it out, see what kind of gains I can make...hopefully I’ll be able to volunteer at our program, just try to stay involved.”

His coach would welcome him with open arms.

“We’ve been working towards that process from the beginning,” Erickson says. “I’m very excited about that; it’s going to be great...my goal now is to help him learn how to coach.He’s definitely worked hard and been very dedicated to the program, and it’s been a joy to work with him.”

But his girlfriend doesn’t want him to hurry into coaching just yet.

“Sometimes he’s kind of a natural coach, so my advice to him is to try to see things from the perspective of the athletes,” she says.

“I want him to try to sympathize with other people on the team and to remain in the college moment before he’s a coach,” she says.

Yet being a natural leader seems something that’s always been innately in Brady’s blood.

“He communicates very well—that’s one of his strengths when it comes to both being an athlete and a captain,” Erickson says.

“He believes he needs to be successful to fulfill his captainship, which makes him better.”

“He’s someone who people really look up to,” Boyle adds. “I think he’s a great role model, especially for the younger athletes. He has a way of leading by example. He’s always the first one there and the last one to leave practice, he’s always there for anyone who has questions about the sport, and I think that extends to the rest of his life too.”

A shower, a change of clothes, and back across the river. Dinner, studying (today he’s reading about Charlemagne and eighth-century government), more hanging out, then bed–ready to do it all again tomorrow.