Why I Traded Basketball for Biology
UNDERGRADUATE CHAIR
When people hear that I quit the Dartmouth women's basketball team they assume I left for the same reasons most college seniors leave a sport: I was either injured or sick of the game. But having twice been chosen Ivy Player of the Year, I love my sport, and I'm injury-free.
Instead, I gave up my senior season to live in a jungle. As part of a program that will prepare me for graduate study in biology, I am travelling through Costa Rica and Jamaica, visiting a lowland rain forest, a cloud forest, and a dry forest, as well as seeing experimental projects in tropical agriculture, aquaculture and forestry. This is my first time outside the United States; I never imagined as a kid growing up in Wyoming that I would live and work in such places.
There are few better experiences for a wouldbe biologist. The difference between the controlled laboratory experiments that I'm used to and the actual living ecosystems is like a basketball practice compared to the game itself. One teaches how things are supposed to happen, given certain variables; the other is the real thing, out in the open, with uncontrolled variables.
Only a non-athlete would think that my choice would be easy. Who would give up the chance of a lifetime in return for another season of long bus rides? For me, the decision wasn't that simple. On the one hand were the rewards of learning and discovery. But on the other was a sport that I had dedicated half my life to something that was important to my self-image and that dominated my social life.
Even as a tall grade-school kid, I had found a niche in basketball. A decade later, at Dartmouth, my teammates and coaches were my best friends. I relied on them for support and advice. As the newly elected sophomore captain, I never thought about giving up basketball for a stint in the tropics. I wanted to carve my name alongside Dartmouth basketball legends. But honors last only so long. Through my sophomore and junior years, I began to think about my future away from athletics and Dartmouth College. I realized that basketball would not always be part of my life. It was time for off-court performance.
My junior season gave my basketball career the best possible ending: a Harvard game. In my three years at Dartmouth, we had never beaten the Crimson in Cambridge. It was the final game of the season, and a win meant a tie with Harvard for the Ivy title. The game was tight right up to the buzzer, but we won it.
In her three years of basketball at Dartmouth, Liz Walter was 1985-86 Rookie of the Year and later captained two Ivy League championship teams.
