The 2020 Senior Perspectives is the 15th 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.

Katherine Miclau
Hometown: San Francisco, Calif.
House Affiliation: Lowell

My most vivid memory during my entire athletic career was my last meet, HYP at Princeton. To most people on the team, HYP was just another meet. A practice-run for Ivy Championships. But for me, as someone who had never made the Ivy Championship team, this was likely the last time I would ever step on a diving board to compete.

Starting at the end of lower school and lasting through the end of college, I have been a diver. While all other factors in my life were subject to change, ranging from friends, to health, to significant others, diving was always there. Diving was one of the only things that was constant before the onset, during and throughout my recovery from mental illness. It shaped the structure of my day, what I derive meaning from, how I think and how I carry myself in this world. It also taught me lessons that will stick with me for the rest of my life.

Through diving, I learned how to fail. The sound of the smack in the pool, the slow claps during a competition when emerging from the water and the lasting red marks splattered across your skin for hours are publicly humiliating. But over time, experiencing moments of very acute public failure made me less scared of it, and brought perspective to so many facets of my life. I learned to take ownership over my shortcomings. Every time something went wrong in my hurdle, back press, take off or come out, I was the really the only person responsible, which is simultaneously a source of frustration but also one of empowerment. I learned to love criticism, and see it as a huge source of growth as opposed to a personal judgement.

While the lessons I learned from the sport will stick with me for the rest of my life, I remain most grateful to diving for giving me the most treasured mentors, role models and best friends I could ask for. From the very first recruiting trip junior year in high school to Ivy Championships my senior year, the Harvard women's swim and dive team felt like family.

It was the first time that diving had ever felt like a team sport. Regardless of the dive I was doing or the weights I was lifting, there was always a teammate right by my side to support, push and inspire me. Never had I been with a team where every dive that was performed by any one of us felt as though it was an accomplishment for us all. A team whose unrelenting heart, bravery and fearlessness was contagious, and drove us all to strive for excellence. A team who embraced and celebrated each other's weirdness, and who left no one behind.

Walking to the end of the 1-meter springboard to compete the last dive of my college career felt beautifully bittersweet. I heard cheering and yelling before my dive, produced by a mass of teammates, divers behind the boards and swimmers lined up emphatically on the side of the pool. I was competing with a group of women whom I loved, for a school that I called home. Those were my people, that was my sport and I belonged.

My results would indicate that it was the best meet of my college career, but that's not why it was my favorite. The immense joy that I felt in that moment wasn't attributed to the numeric worth of my dives. I couldn't say what my score was, or even what place I got. That feeling was something greater that couldn't be reduced down to a score on a piece of paper.

It was being able to contribute towards something so much greater than myself. It was knowing I had pushed through all the hardships of the sport for the past four years to be a part of this team. It was the inkling of hope that perhaps I had been able to inspire and influence as many women as I have been moved by during my time on HWSD.
I am extremely proud to have competed for such a rich web of incredible, dedicated and passionate women who embody what it means to be teammates.