Marta Lasota 
Silver Spring, Md. 
English 
Kirkland House 

Ithaca. NCAA Regionals. March 8th. It was the last bout to make the final round. I had dominated my first pool. Now, in the next round, I stood with two wins, three losses and only one bout left. I had felt entirely in control at the start of the day, but that feeling had quietly evaporated, slipping away loss by loss. If I didn't win the next bout, there was no way I'd qualify for the final round, let alone my last NCAA Championships.  

My body entered panic-mode. I could hear my heart punching my chest, my lungs screaming for air. I didn't want to lose. I didn't want to end my senior season, and my fencing career, disappointed.  

I paced behind the strip, my shoulders dropping under the weight of expectations, feeling heavier with every passing second. Daria, my coach, came over to check in. She knew I'd be facing a tough, but beatable, opponent. She told me what she'd been telling me all season.  

Embrace expectations. Rise to the occasion.  

With the small bits of self-control I could muster, I focused on my breathing. This was it. Win or lose, I would put up a fight. When the referee called my name to hook up to the strip, I took my time, walking over slowly. My nerves twisting my insides, I put my mask on and got into en garde. 

I found my fire that bout, winning 5-0 and securing my spot in the final round.  

From the outside, that bout was seemingly ordinary. It wasn't championship-winning or title-clinching. But for me, it was one of the most difficult and special moments of my athletic career.  

It's a feeling that's hard to describe. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it flow. Others call it the zone. To me, this feeling is leaping off the edge of a cliff and trusting, with full faith, that all your training will get your feet to land on the other side. That's what this entire season had felt like.  

I unhooked with a smile on my face and with Daria telling me to never forget this moment. 

Two days later, we found out that campus was evacuating due to Covid-19. Shortly after, the NCAA Championships were canceled too. This was not how I, or any of us, expected the season to end, but I suppose such an unorthodox ending only fits with all that occurred this past year. The truth is, there was nothing at all ordinary about this season.  

My co-captains and I were elected into a tidal shift in our program. We assisted with the national search for a new head coach and went into, blindly, what would be an entire year full of change and growing pains.  

As a team, at first, we struggled to find common ground. It wasn't until J-term, after spending an absurd number of hours discussing what exactly the words family, respect and professionalism meant to us, that our new team culture took root. Shifting from a results-oriented mindset to one focused on process, we embraced the day-in and day-out commitment to plain, smart, hard work. Our new team motto: drip, drip, drip.  

This year was also filled to the brim with joy, moments large and small. From hosting Ivy's at home, where our men's team won outright Ivy League Champions, to my lovely co-captain Nat screaming, primal-like, FIRE ME UP, into my mask before a bout, to our most memorable celebration of the season: an impromptu, bittersweet team banquet held two months too early in the back room of Dunster d-hall, a few nights before we all left campus.  

Since my first year on the fencing team, we have always said that HFT is family. In a moment of pain and tremendous uncertainty, our family came together. It's a moment I'll never forget.  

Not all of us will hold trophies on the podium. But we can all strive to be the number one version of ourselves. Wearing the Harvard H, as a fencer and a captain, made me want to be every bit better – as an athlete, teammate and leader – for every single person in my family.  

Thank you, Harvard, for pushing me out of my comfort zone, for helping me find the courage to be the woman I am today. Thank you, Harvard Athletics, for the gift of a team for life. And thank you, HFT, for the best four years I could have ever asked for.  

As I bid farewell to college, to Harvard and to fencing, I'm reminded of wise words from the late Kobe Bryant: "There's no greater metaphor for life than sports itself." While I might not be competing, with sword in hand, on the same stage again, Harvard Athletics has prepared me for the greatest stage there is. That of life itself.