The Stories of Harvard: Marie Margolius

The Stories of Harvard: Marie Margolius ’15, Women's Soccer

The Stories of Harvard spotlights Harvard athletics alumni on their professional journey beyond their time in Cambridge and reflects on a specific game or event as a Crimson student-athlete from a first-person perspective.

An Introduction

My name is Marie Margolius. I was class of 2015 at Harvard. I grew up in Acton, Massachusetts, which is about 45 minutes from Cambridge, so I didn't go too far for college. And after I graduated, I played soccer in Sweden briefly and landed in New York in 2016 and have been here ever since.

I started my career at ESPN working for a fellow Harvard grad named Connor Schell, who created the 30 for 30 documentary franchise. I was lucky enough to work alongside him at ESPN for five years before leaving with him in 2021 when he started his own production company, Words + Pictures. We are a documentary production company based in New York. We produce premium documentaries, docuseries, live events and TV specials.  I'm a producer and director at the company.

Game Preview

Saturday, October 29 was Senior Day for the Crimson and the team’s first opportunity to clinch a share of the Ivy League title. A year earlier, Harvard finished in fourth-place and the 2011 squad was on the verge of returning to the top of the table and earning the right to represent the league in the NCAA Tournament.

The Crimson were 10-4-1 overall and 4-0-1 in the gauntlet that was the Ivy League in the days before a conference tournament. The Big Green visited Soldiers Field at 3-11-0 overall, 1-4-0 in the Ivy and always a tough match-up.

Prior to the game, Harvard recognized its six seniors; Melanie Baskind, Lindsey Kowal, Sophie Legros, Rebecca Millock, Hana Taiji and Patricia Yau. Shortly after, Aurelia Solomon struck for Dartmouth on a shot from 25 yards out under the crossbar. Harvard’s postseason hopes could not be erased in a loss or tie, but a comeback for the home side would dramatically improve the team’s outlook.

Marie Margolius' Ivy League Championship Story

Setting the Scene

Without an Ivy League tournament back then, the in-conference games – every single one – was a championship in our minds. That's how we approached every Ivy competition, and that was ingrained early in all of the freshmen by the upperclassmen. This particular game, just by virtue of being an Ivy matchup, there was so much on the line. It was our second-to-last game of the season and it was freezing, raining, hailing. There was a level of intensity and competition that I don't know that I had ever felt in my soccer career to-date.That's what I loved about playing in the Ivy League. It felt like you were going into battle every Saturday with your teammates, and that was the most bonding thing – you became so close because you are going into battle together every week.

The Captain Comes Through

In this Dartmouth game, I remember we were tied. I don't remember the Dartmouth goal, but I do remember our first goal was scored by our senior captain, Mel Baskind – which felt fitting because it was senior night. She was our leading goal scorer, an incredible player, an amazing leader and one of the people that had a really big impact on me my freshman year. She made clear the culture of the team was one that was competitive for sure, but also super welcoming, open-minded and kind – those were the sort of things that defined our locker room. There was this sense of togetherness and a feeling that everybody was part of it. 

Battling the Big Green and Mother Nature

The game was a slog. It was a really hard game. The ball kept getting held up by the rain and the puddles, and it was messy. We were a good soccer team, and that was not a pretty soccer game. We always had a hard time breaking down Dartmouth. They played in this low block and were defensively strong. It always felt like sort of a stalemate against them, and that's where we found ourselves in the 90th minute that day when Peyton Johnson, another player who had a big impact on me, had a free kick outside the box.

With less than a minute to go, we had a free kick and I don't exactly remember the details of the lead up or even the kick itself, but I will never forget the feeling of accomplishment and togetherness and relief that we all felt in that moment. It is still one of my favorite athletic moments of my life. I just felt really proud and happy, and that free kick was what secured a share of the Ivy title for us.

The Recap

Harvard was knocking on the door in the final moments with four shots toward net between the 78th and 89th minutes, including a Margolius header off a Johnson corner kick. A Dartmouth foul set up Johnson for the free kick from 20 yards out on the right side of the box. Johnson blasted a right-footed strike under the crossbar with just 10 seconds left on the clock for the game-winning goal; her fourth goal of the season.

The win clinched a share of the title and Penn’s tie with Brown earned the Crimson the Ivy League’s automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament. A week later, Harvard claimed the title outright with a 1-0 win at Columbia as freshman Lauren Urke found the net for the lone goal of the game.

Winning in the Clutch

Set-Piece Specialist

Peyton was a player who was both incredibly technical, but also tactically smart and that's the exact person you want stepping up to the ball at that point in the game when so much is on the line. She was our go-to set piece person, which is pretty amazing as an underclassman to be the person that can handle that pressure and also has that skill.

Embracing Bad Weather

I grew up in New England, and I grew up playing in the snow and the ice and the rain, and so while what I love about soccer is the fast-paced, beautiful short passes and really connecting with your teammates and being creative in the final third, playing in the elements was also something that I was used to. You sort of feel this badge of honor when you're playing in tough conditions and you overcome it. More than anything, it requires mental toughness. Having the mental fortitude to persevere through those elements is something that that team had, and that I remember feeling really proud of.

Team Culture

We won three out of four Ivy championships and I think it was because of the diversity on our team. That's a credit to our coaches for the recruiting that they did. They weren't just recruiting the best players that they could possibly recruit; they were recruiting a tapestry of players that were complementary, but not homogenous in any way. There was a real diversity and sort of beautiful and perfect mix of people from different backgrounds and different places that worked really well together. That's one of the biggest things I took away from Harvard was how advantageous it is to surround yourself with people that look and talk and act differently than you do.

Continuing the Legacy of Harvard Soccer

Margolius and her class went on to win three Ivy League titles in four years. She and Meg Casscells-Hamby captained the 2014 team that won the second of back-to-back titles and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament with a win over Central Connecticut and travelled to play number-one seed UCLA.

The Crimson have been to 19 NCAA Tournaments and claimed 13 Ivy League championships. Coach Leone was succeeded by his assistant Chris Hamblin, who has guided Harvard to one Ivy League regular season title, one Ivy League Tournament championship and four NCAA postseason berths in his 10 years at the helm.

Margolius' Harvard Experience

Diversity as an Asset

What I think Harvard, and Harvard soccer in particular, gave to me was an appreciation for and an understanding of how much our differences as people and as soccer players are an asset to the overall success of the team. We had players from all over the place, all over the country, all over the world, from so many different backgrounds, with different strengths, different weaknesses, different personalities, different demographics, and I think that was what made us so successful during my time at Harvard.

In the Classroom

There was one class that I took my senior year that changed the course of my career and life. It was a theater, dance and media class called Directing. It was a small class taught by Marcus Stern that was probably eight to 10 students, and each week the professor would choose a theme. So the theme could be sound or lighting or dialogue, and each of the students had to choose a script, a text from theater or cinema or TV, and bring in actors to the class and actually direct the actors in that scene.

It was the first time that I understood how important it was, for my career and for me, to be creating something that I love. The idea of taking a script on a piece of paper and turning that into a living, breathing scene with actors that an audience could enjoy and react to and make them feel something. Before that class, I did not know that I wanted to be in production or in film and after that class it was very clear to me that that was the realm that I wanted to go into. 

A Career in Storytelling

ESPN Experience

ESPN solidified my love for sports and my understanding that the best stories are encapsulated in the sports world. There's so much within the confines of a game, and the 90 minutes of a soccer game, or whatever happens on a basketball court or a football field. There's the score, but there's also so much underneath that. There's interpersonal relationships, and there's underdogs, and there's favorites and there's victory and there's defeat. Being around that at ESPN made clear to me the storytelling opportunity that existed in sports.

A lot of what the 30 for 30 group did at ESPN was hire third-party production companies to produce the films. I was eager to get the type of experience where I was out in the field, conducting interviews, booking talent, hiring a team, editing the film. All of those things that I now do at Words + Pictures is what led me to the smaller production company side of things.

Words + Pictures

Working at Words + Pictures has been a dream. I have settled into a niche of storytelling that exists primarily in the women's sports space. A lot of the films and documentaries and documentary series that I produce are about women's sports and women's soccer in particular, which is so fulfilling to me on a level that's hard to articulate. Soccer has always been a part of my life and identity, and so it feels completely natural that I'm continuing to think and breathe, and love soccer every day.

The Creative Lens of a Fan

I think the beauty of my job is that the personal and professional interests aren't any different. So even if I wasn't working in sports production, I think I would be watching those games, looking for the best stories, and yes, I definitely do that when I go to games now as just a fan, the same way that I do when I go for work. I think that's sort of a perfect encapsulation of the beauty of my job is that it combines what I genuinely love as a person and allows me to make a living from it.

Alumna Reflections

The Harvard Education

Graduating from Harvard and playing soccer at Harvard is one of the things that I continue to be the most proud of in my life. It's such a demanding environment, and it's also one that has afforded me a lot of the opportunities in my professional career. It's hard to overstate the impact that graduating from Harvard has had on my life, and I'm just so grateful for it.

Harvard Soccer’s Strength

I don't think there's any reason why Harvard shouldn't be a top contender in women's soccer. We have an environment in the Ivy League that is so conducive to really high levels of competition, and I think a lot of my teammates and myself included were deciding between some major powerhouse teams that you would more traditionally think of as soccer programs, but the reason we chose Harvard is because it gives you that same level of competition and so much more. Harvard may not be what you would think of when you think of powerhouse women's soccer programs, but I don't think that there's any reason it shouldn't be or can't be in the future.