The 2016 Senior Perspectives is the 11th in a series of annual collections. Senior captains and representatives of teams at Harvard have been invited to contribute viewpoints based on personal experience from both their senior seasons and full varsity careers at Harvard.
For a complete listing of 2016 Senior Perspectives, click here.
Sherry Liu, Women's Swimming & Diving
Hometown: White Rock, British Columbia, Canada
Concentration: English
House Affiliation: Adams
Throughout my career as a swimmer, there have been a distressing number of times in which I've woken up in the morning for practice, saw 5:45 a.m on my phone, and strongly considered putting the sheets over my head and going back to sleep. In my younger days sometimes I did just that. Yet once I entered college, hitting the snooze button once or twice (or six times) was no longer an option. Not that I'd lost my love for sleep (as my teammates can attest, I'm still able to nap with the best of them), but I'd gained a new sense of accountability – one that can be credited to HWSD's emphasis, time and again, on the importance of putting the team first.
As a Harvard student-athlete, I quickly learned that I answered not only to myself, but to the other thirty-something women I called my teammates and friends. When I got up at the crack of dawn (and often way before even that) and made the walk across the river, I was doing it so that I could contribute to a purpose extending well beyond my own individual goals in sport. Whether it was winning a race, winning a duel meet, or, ultimately, winning an Ivy championship, I can say with confidence that all the successes this team has experienced this year (and there are many), happened only because each member of HWSD walked onto the pool deck, every morning and afternoon, with that same sense of purpose – that same understanding that the team comes first.
When I'm old enough that even a 50 of freestyle will seem like a daunting challenge, I won't be able to remember the times I posted or the points I scored. I will, however, undoubtedly still be able to recall tackling the most brutal of practices with the distance group: all the timed mile swims, the thoroughly enjoyable 5 x 400's on training trip, and of course, the 55 x 100's in which not one of us had enough left in the tank to lead the lane for more than five of them at a time. I'll remember surfing in Hawaii, team dinners, Secret Santa gift exchanges, and jumping into the pool (albeit Princeton's pool) one last time as Ivy champions. These are the memories that are the most important to me, because they could've only happened with a group as special as HWSD.
Swimming for this team has taught me lessons that even a Harvard classroom would be hard-pressed to replicate. I can't think of anyone better than my teammates and my coaches to look to for the qualities of humility, perseverance, leadership, and selflessness. It is through them that I have become not just a better athlete, but a better person. I'm so incredibly grateful to have trained and raced for every name on four years worth of rosters.
Now as a “swammer,” I can (and do) sleep in for as long as I want. Yet, while I welcome the feeling of being well rested, I'll certainly miss all the emotions I've traded in for it: the pride of finishing a tough workout with d-lane, the joy of bonding with teammates on long bus rides, the excitement of standing behind the blocks before a race. It'll take some time to adjust to this new stage of my life. It gives me comfort, however, to know that even after I've completed my last journey out of Blodgett and back across the river, I'll continue to be impressed and inspired by all that HWSD will accomplish in the future. I may not be able to race a mile in ten (or maybe even one) years time, but the time I've enjoyed on this team will stay with me forever. In some regard or another, I'll always be a part of Harvard swimming and diving. There is no way to truly, properly describe the gratitude I feel in being able to say that. For now I hope a simple “thank you” can suffice.
