Growing Up in Sport
For most of my life, sport has been the constant running alongside everything else. Long before I thought seriously about studying History, I understood my world through practices, competitions, and teams.
I started young — five years old, signed up by my mom for anything available through our parish: soccer, basketball, track. By high school, I was juggling field hockey alongside basketball and track, competing at a high level and traveling frequently for tournaments and meets.
What I didn’t fully appreciate at the time was how much those teams would shape the rest of my life. Sport wasn’t just structure; it was community. Most of my closest friends in high school came from my teams, people I likely never would have met otherwise. Through them, I traveled to Iowa, Florida, and across Ohio for major tournaments and track meets, experiences that expanded my world far beyond the classroom.
Finding My Way to University Athletics
By my junior year of high school, sport stopped being just a constant in my life and started becoming a possibility. I hadn’t expected it to shape my future as much as it did.
The shift had begun a year earlier, when my field hockey coaches encouraged me to join a more competitive club team and suggested that, if I worked hard enough, I could play at the college level. I had never seriously considered that path before. But once I joined the team and began reaching out to universities, things moved quickly. I suddenly found myself a recruited athlete.
That same year, my mom convinced me to attend an admissions talk for a university called Johns Hopkins, a school I had quite literally never heard of. She mentioned it was in Baltimore, which I disliked on principle, given that my beloved Cleveland Browns had been stolen by the Baltimore Ravens. Nonetheless, we attended the talk at a (pretentious) local public school, and I loved everything I heard. Hopkins was a research university, it offered the kind of History and Philosophy courses I had imagined studying, and Baltimore, though still morally questionable in terms of football, shared some of the same rust-belt qualities as my perfect hometown of Cleveland.
Thinking about Hopkins seemed a bit antithetical to my original university plans, though. Both my parents had attended Notre Dame, which I’d visited every year when I was younger to watch football games, and also conveniently was home to four of my cousins and aunt. I loved northern Indiana in the same way I loved Cleveland and would come to love Baltimore (everyone’s top three areas in the US). I liked that it was Catholic, I liked that it offered such a humanistic focus, I loved its commitment to service. But Hopkins lingered at the back of my mind. It seemed to offer even more academically, it was located in a major city, and its research culture felt unlike anything I had seen elsewhere.
So I reached out to Hopkins field hockey. I attended ID camps, spoke with the coaches, and became a recruited athlete. But the process didn’t work out exactly as planned. Somewhere halfway through recruitment, I realized I didn’t actually want to play field hockey in college, and that I probably wasn’t Hopkins’ number-one recruit for the team anyway.
Instead, I searched for the Hopkins track team. It turned out I was just as fast as many of their athletes. I contacted the coach, we spoke several times, and in a whirlwind few weeks I received a “likely letter” from Hopkins stating that I would be accepted as a track athlete if I applied in the fall of my senior year.
The Reality of College Sports
I moved to Baltimore in the Fall of 2021 and I began my collegiate sprinting career. It was going really well, at first. I met all these lovely people (and my best friends to this day); I was sprinting fast; I was lifting well. But during my second semester, I became seriously ill with mononucleosis (mono). I was immediately suspended from athletic activity for six weeks. To add insult to injury, the day after I had finally been cleared from mono, I tested positive for COVID, and was sent to a hotel to isolate myself for 10 full days. I was absolutely miserable.
When I returned to track, something felt different. My lung capacity seemed diminished. I felt slow, and the workouts I had completed comfortably earlier that year suddenly felt impossible. I ran the slowest times of my career, slower than I had run at sixteen, and I felt like I contributed nothing to the team. That summer, I made a promise to myself: if my lungs were weaker and my speed had declined, I would at least become the strongest version of myself.
While working as a summer school teacher in Milwaukee that summer, I trained five days a week, often for hours at a time. Every day I walked to the gym or the track, completed the workouts my coach prescribed (or an equivalent cardio session), followed a structured weightlifting program, and finished with core work. The results were clear: while I became somewhat faster, I’d become significantly stronger.
When I returned for my sophomore year, I began to realize that I was happiest in the weight room. I felt strong and confident there, even if my sprinting still lagged behind. It felt like, if nothing else, the weight room could carry me through recovery. Yet the experience of transitioning from that period of intense sickness to relatively good health proved difficult. Like many of my teammates, I had been one of the strongest athletes on my high school team. In college, however, I was suddenly at the bottom of the pack, and it often felt like no one truly understood that transition, or dared to understand, lest they also be cast to my position.
At our indoor conference track meet that year, I finished my 200 meter dash, and broke into tears immediately after. I’d run so slowly, I felt like I hadn’t improved, and I felt stuck.
By that point, teammates had suggested that I try throwing events for weeks. They thought my strength in the weight room might translate well into a new event. I had resisted. I assumed throwers were bigger and stronger than I was, and I didn’t think I belonged in that discipline. But that 200 meter dash was just so awful that I went to my coach and told him something needed to change. Maybe I could throw. To my surprise, he agreed immediately and introduced me to the throws coach that same day.
So, halfway through my collegiate career, I became a thrower.
The transition was challenging. Instead of sprint intervals and endurance training, I spent hours practicing highly technical drills, moving my body into strange positions to launch heavy metal implements as far as possible. But the team was awesome. My teammates were great, my new coach was so encouraging, and for once, I felt like I was making progress. I could see my work in the weight room pay off; I wasn’t stuck on knowing previous times or marks and comparing myself to what I could do at 16 (since I’d not done this sport at all before), and I felt free, and above all else, so happy.
Moving to throwing might’ve been the best decision I made in college, maybe even better for me than my academic pursuits. It allowed me a new avenue to express myself outside of school and make new friends and challenge myself in a new, meaningful way.
The fall after my first semester throwing, I studied in Cambridge and joined the athletics team there, competing in shot put and hammer. It was an incredible experience. I stood out as the top shot-putter on the team, and the confidence carried back with me when I returned to Hopkins.
Back in Baltimore, I learned discus and improved in both hammer and shot put. My teammates became some of my closest friends. We had one million inside jokes, we hosted outrageous brunches, we sang along to songs with our coach, we participated in synchronized dances mid-practice.
I felt so fulfilled outside of school, not only athletically but also socially through the support of my coach and teammates. I spent the summers lifting with my weights coach (who is, and was, one of my favorite people). Everything was going so well, maybe too well, going into my senior year. I’d be getting my Master’s, I’d be having the best time with my friends during our final year of school, and, hopefully, I’d have my breakout throwing year.
That’s when everything crumbled.
The day after my first throws practice of the Fall, my back began severely cramping. The pain escalated quickly. It hurt to sit, or to stand, much less to throw weights. I removed any weight from throwing and only focused on form in practice, but still kept giving it all in the weight room, that is, until I realized I was getting shooting pains from my lower back to my toes, and that a back squat of 225 pounds regularly was only exacerbating that pain. By Thanksgiving, even lying down hurt. I remember crying during the holiday because I had no answers. Despite being surrounded by medical expertise at Johns Hopkins, no one could explain what was wrong.
I spent days just crying, angry, upset that nobody could figure out what was wrong. How could I be at Johns Hopkins, America’s so-called premier medical institution, and yet I was in constant pain that nobody else seemed to understand? I argued with my parents daily – none of their solutions would help. They definitely didn’t understand what it was like to suddenly live with this new-found pain.
After Christmas break that year, I switched athletic trainers. My new trainer booked me appointments with our in-house doctor for student-athletes, and she scheduled me MRIs. It became apparent that I’d herniated and slipped two discs in my lower back.
But how to treat that? Steroids made me (literally) crazy, strong NSAIDs provided some relief, but nothing permanent. In the end, I had two smaller surgeries to inject cortisone into my spine for relief (sort of like an epidural). That finally helped. But recovery was long and grueling. For months in the Spring, I attend physical therapy with my athletic trainer 2-3x a week. I was only allowed to bike, and all my lifts were significantly modified (no more squats, much less barbell, far more dumbbell, no more lunges, but more bench press).
When I started to feel just a bit better, I asked my trainer if I could please do any other activity outside of biking. It had become, to put it lightly, a bit boring to bike for hours every day and stare at the same background. I suggested rowing, which I’d taken up while at Cambridge. It took her a while, but she eventually budged. A few minutes on the rowing machine gradually became fifteen, then thirty. Soon, I was also allowed to resume very limited throwing, “standing throws,” without spins or explosive movement. But I didn’t care. At least I was back.
I competed in exactly one meet during my senior year: the final qualifier before our outdoor conference championships. Miraculously, I qualified in both shot put and hammer using only standing throws. I was ecstatic. I was still in pain, but I got to compete, attend conferences, laugh with my teammates, and finish my senior year alongside them.
Life After College Athletics
When track ended, I experienced a strange mix of emotions. I was sad after spending fifteen years in organized sport and twenty hours a week training in college. But I was also relieved. Track had taken a heavy toll on my body.
Still, I couldn’t imagine life without sport.
So after graduation, when I moved back to Cleveland, I joined an under-30 rowing team. I could meet friends and I could keep doing organized sport, hopefully one that wouldn’t kill me.
I think I really underestimated how hard it would be to pick up rowing. While I’d done it at Cambridge and had rowed for maybe 30 minutes per day in the Spring, doing it full-time was hard. We had practice at 5:30 in the mornings, and most of my teammates were experienced rowers, who weren’t necessarily extremely welcoming to someone who was new to the sport, and whose technique certainly reflected that.
It was frustrating and lonely. At first, I wasn’t put into boats – I was stuck subbing into the men’s boat, or erging on the land alone while everyone else got outside. I sometimes felt my teammates disliked me because of my inexperience, and I felt like I couldn’t improve because no one gave me the opportunity to row on the water and get experience. Ironically, learning yet another new sport even triggered recurring nightmares that I had suddenly become a heptathlete forced to learn entirely new disciplines in track (hurdling, high jump). Subconsciously, having to re-learn, or learn, new sports throughout my adolescence so many times had created this deep-rooted fear and anxiety.
But halfway through the summer, things began to change. I finally started improving on the water and joined a women’s eight scheduled to race at the end of the season. I also began spending time with teammates outside of rowing, at breakfasts, concerts, and other social events. Once people got to know me beyond the boat, everything felt easier.
At the season’s end, we won our race. And I didn’t do anything catastrophic to ruin it.
Rowing in London
When I moved to England, I faced another intimidating challenge: rowing on the River Thames.
The first club I tried was one of the strongest in the area, filled with former Division I and semi-professional rowers. Needless to say, I was outmatched. Fortunately, the next club I contacted welcomed me warmly. They even had an intermediate squad designed for rowers with some experience but not at an elite level. The team also had a reputation for its social life. Their boathouse included a bar, and rowers gathered there after outings and races. It felt like the perfect combination of sport and community in a new city.
Six months later, I’m incredibly grateful for the team. It’s slightly insane to devote twenty hours a week to a sport as a working professional, especially without the medical staff, free food, and beautiful facilities that college athletics provided. But the challenge is rewarding. I’m improving on the erg, refining my technique, and still spending time in my favorite place in any athletic facility: the weight room. Most importantly, I’ve met people who have become close friends, people I see regularly and truly care about.
What Sport Has Taught Me
Looking back, my athletic journey has carried a lot of stress alongside the joy. I began seeing a therapist in high school when intense training triggered panic attacks. I struggled again when illness ended my sprinting career and when chronic back pain reshaped my life.
And yet, despite every setback and despite repeatedly having to learn entirely new sports, I’ve been okay. In fact, I’ve succeeded. That may be the most important lesson sport has given me. Even when everything seems to be falling apart, there is usually still time and space to grow. If I work hard and continue putting myself out there, things tend to work out.
I moved to another country. I started another new sport. I began new research. And despite all the bumps and hurdles along the way, I’ve ultimately been fine. Not just fine. I’ve been great.
