Harvard Athletes Not So Different

“Ultimate frisbee,” she said. “It’s pretty much my life.”

I was sitting down with some girls on my floor on one of the first Mondays of my sophomore year, and I had asked the generic question, “What kind of activities do you do on campus?”

I was already good friends with a member of Quasar, the women’s ultimate team, so I had an idea of the kind of commitment it took to be part of that squad. But I was still surprised and impressed when I saw how much time it took for her to plan and fundraise for the team’s trip to Vegas that year.

Was captaining a competitive club team really a smaller commitment than the ones made by varsity athletes? And were our decisions to join crew and frisbee so different? We had both been high school runners—she a better one than I, from what I’ve heard—looking to play sports in college. And we both found different areas where we could pour our dedication and determination.

And it’s not just between athletes of different sports that I can find parallels. This year, one of my roommates is very active in dancing on campus.

I’ve never attempted to pursue dancing, unless you count a couple of ballet lessons when I was really young (my mom enticed me by saying football players did it), so learning about her ballroom and breakdancing has allowed me to expand my horizons.

But it’s not as if we talk about dance, take a break, and then talk about rowing. Instead, we usually end up talking about them at the same time. As athletic pursuits, their objectives are about as far away from each other as possible, but the preparations are remarkably similar. We talk about staying in shape, building strength, and being in sync with teammates.

Far from expressing different opinions formed from our different activities, we often seem to be saying the same thing to each other.

Our Harvard careers have followed similar story lines.

We both picked up our activities when we got to college, and both of us got swept in pretty quickly. My roommate spent three years on the ballroom team and was president for one year. This fall, she’s joined the Harvard Breakers.

Both of us spend much of our day practicing and thinking about activities we had never tried before we got to campus. I don’t know whether that’s fate or random chance or what. Sure, the odds of me being a dancer were probably pretty low. But what if something else had caught my eye before I made up my mind to be a college athlete? How might my life had been different if I’d actually made travel soccer? What if I’d watched “Mighty Ducks” before “Space Jam”? Would I have played hockey in high school?

Through a simple list of questions, it’s easy to see how our current positions have a lot to do with luck.

Joining activities are some of the best ways to meet new friends and discover commonalities. But I think it’s really important that we not think we are somehow special because we participate in them. I don’t consider the Crimson athlete a subspecies separate from the rest of the college community. Harvard, as a school, is fundamentally driven toward excellence, and so are all of its students whether that excellence comes in soccer, math, singing, or government—or in some cases, all of the above (in which case, good for you!).

I think any kind of supposed divide between student-athletes and the rest of the student body is largely fabricated and artificial. I’ve read articles debating the relative merits of athletics and academics, but I don’t see how the two are exclusive.

As a member of the athletic community, I don’t feel any greater obligation to attend athletic games than I do to participate in House events or go to my friends’ a cappella concerts. And I’ve been lucky enough to get to know people who are involved in a wide variety of activities on campus.

The beauty of college is that you don’t have to choose. Sure, you only have a limited amount of time, and you can’t participate in every activity. But you can work to get to know people whose list of campus activities seems completely different than yours.

You might learn to take a new perspective on things, you might learn you’re not so different after all, or you might just find out about more events with free food.

You can’t really go wrong.

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.