-- By Kirsten Green
 
This was the moment she had waited two years for: the South African field hockey team was headed to the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Hannah Pearce '22 had taken a leave from Harvard in the spring of 2020 to train with the national team in her hometown of Johannesburg, but the 2020 Olympics were postponed to 2021. She took another leave in the spring of 2021 to prepare with her squad for the Games. The plane was finally leaving for Tokyo, and there was just one problem: Pearce wasn't on it.
 
Pearce grew up playing tennis, basketball, and field hockey. Her parents cut a field hockey stick in half so their three-year-old daughter could play.
 
Fast forward a few years, and Pearce, now excelling with a regulation stick, had decided to attend college abroad in the United States. Harvard's assistant coach at the time, South African native Marvin Bam, helped put the school on Pearce's radar as a viable option.
 
Tjerk van Herwaarden, Harvard's Head Coach for Field Hockey, remembers having a conversation with Pearce and her father on her campus visit. "We joked around that in four or five years, she could be an Olympian and have a Harvard degree, and I think that really resonated with them," van Herwaarden said.
 
Not knowing that the Covid-19 pandemic would soon send all of her classmates home too, Pearce left campus in February 2020 to train with her Olympic team. As the pandemic intensified weeks later, South Africa endured severe Covid lockdowns. Pearce was unable to leave her home for several months, and the Olympics were eventually postponed until summer 2021.
 
Pearce experienced Harvard's fall 2020 semester remotely from Johannesburg. With the six-hour time difference, some of her classes started locally in the middle of the night. She and her family decided it wasn't sustainable to train and study that way, and she took a second leave in the spring of 2021 to again focus on Olympic preparation.
 
Of the 22 members of the South African national team, 19 would travel to the Tokyo Olympics. On May 27, 2021, Pearce got the call saying that she wouldn't be one of them. She distinctly remembers the date—it was the day she would have graduated with her Harvard class if she hadn't taken academic leaves to train.
 
"I don't regret taking the time off. I don't regret not graduating that day," Pearce said. "But in the moment, it was a very tough day. And then I had to tell my parents, which almost broke me more."
 
Pearce immediately turned to moving forward.
 
"I asked my coach what I could work on, what I could improve, what do I need to do, because this is something that I want to do," Pearce said. "I want to represent my country. I want to play in the Olympics and World Cups."
 
Pearce continued training with the team as an alternate player, knowing she wouldn't be going to the Olympics unless someone else unfortunately dropped out. During the Games, she got up at 3:00 a.m. to watch the live broadcast of the team's matches. "I was incredibly proud of the team for what they did, and I was proud to be a part of that," Pearce said.
 
"What has really been extraordinary with Hannah is that, as soon as the plane left for Tokyo, then her focus became Harvard," van Herwaarden remembered. "She was fit and ready to go right away, because she had prepared for the Olympics, as if she was going to play in them. She came back to Harvard in August 2021, and as a co-captain and as a leader, there was only one thing on her mind, and that was to lead Harvard to the season that we eventually had. In more ways than one, she was a leader that inspired, led, motivated, and set the standard for the people around her."
 
"Coming back to campus, I was kind of nervous—my confidence had taken a hit," Pearce said. "But then once we got started, I wanted to just trust in myself and the training that I had done. Just enjoy it, just love being here. This is what we had waited 21 months for."
 
The Harvard team's goal was to win the Ivy League championship and the automatic NCAA tournament bid that comes with it.  But the seniors and juniors had already made the second round of NCAAs in 2018, and they wanted to go further—to the NCAA final four.
 
The underclass players integrated well, and the team chemistry was exceptional from the start.
 
"I just had a feeling that there was something here, that this was special. We love it here. We love each other. We just loved playing hockey, at this point," Pearce said. "Every single person showed up every single day, no matter how many minutes they got in a game. It was just a very happy environment that everyone wanted to be a part of."
 
Van Herwaarden said there were many exceptional players on the team, but Pearce "set the tone, and that came primarily from the maturity she gained from everything she went through."
 
"She has the unbelievable quality of making the people around her better, and to lead in two different ways—the communication part, but also stepping up when it matters most," van Herwaarden said. "And her combination with Mimi [Tarrant '22] as a co-captain was a phenomenal partnership that allowed this team to be as successful as we were this year."
 
Successful, they were indeed. The 2021 team was undefeated in the Ivy League, won the Ivy title, and advanced to the NCAA tournament, beating Louisville and host Michigan to advance to the NCAA semifinals, held on the Wolverines' home field.
 
After coming up short in a national semifinal against Northwestern, Pearce consoled her teammates. "We have made history—we have done things that this program has not done before," Pearce said. "We will always be the team that made the final four."
 
The squad achieved all of its goals, as did Pearce. "As an individual, one of my goals this year was to be a leader, to be heard on the field, to be present," she said. "I wasn't going to be shy anymore. If I see something, I'm just going to say it. I gained that confidence as a leader."
 
She was also named the Ivy League Defensive Player of Year, a First-Team All-Ivy League honoree (for the third time), and the third NFHCA First-Team All-American in Harvard's history.
 
Pearce, a psychology concentrator with a secondary in mind brain behavior, will soon receive the Harvard diploma that she well earned. The Winthrop House resident is also a nominee for the Radcliffe Prize, given annually to Harvard's "most outstanding athlete from a women's team" at the Senior Letterwinners' Dinner on the eve of Commencement.
 
"I actually couldn't have dreamt the way that this season went. The whole process and the whole story has just been a fairytale. It's been amazing," Pearce said.
 
"It just goes back to those moments in the recruiting process, where you talk about your goals, what you want to get out of it," van Herwaarden said. "Even with everything that happened, in a week, she will be a Harvard graduate. And although she just missed the Olympics, she is World Cup-bound, and I think there will be many more highlights to come in her career."
 
Pearce was recently named to South Africa's senior national team, which, in July, will compete in the 2022 World Cup in Spain and the Netherlands. Stay tuned…. The end of her fairytale may not yet be written.