The Sporting Life

Fourteen female athletes describe in their own words what keeps them on the field of play.

KRISHNA GUARINO '01

Sport: Ice Hockey Majors: History and Psychology

"Since sixth grade it was my dream to come to Dartmouth and play hockey. I'd gone to Dartmouth hockey camps growing up. The girls there were awesome—I wanted to be just like them.

"Hockey is fantastic here, largely because of the coaching staff. I love going to practice, love every drill that we do. It's a really enthusiastic atmosphere. The coach keeps it upbeat, jokes with us.

"Women's hockey has a great professor following. When football guys walk into classrooms, professors think 'steak head.' I don't feel like it's like that in women's sports at all. Professors see male athletes' first priority as their sport, but women's sports don't have that rep. They see women as student-athletes, not athletes at school."

LIZ MERRITT '01

Sport: Lacrosse Major: English

"Lacrosse has helped me figure out who I am. It's a microcosm of the world. There are the leaders, the followers, the hard workers, the coach. Lacrosse teaches you so many valuable lessons—teamwork, camaraderie, special bonds—that I don't think you can really find anywhere else. There's an energy and flow and connectedness with those around you.

"I absolutely hate competition. I enjoyed it when I was younger, but I've become disillusioned with it. You lose so much of the hard work and the beauty of athleticism when all the emphasis is on winning and losing. At the same time, there's nothing like the rush and the nerves of finishing or scoring. There's no other high like it."

GUSTY SWIFT '01

Sport: Alpine Skiing Major: Art History

"It takes a certain personality to ski. Most of us are crazy, wild and outgoing. We like to have a good time. We like the adrenaline rush of risk.

"I love to compete, but I don't take it off the hill. I separate athletics from the rest of my life. Even in my sport I've become a little less competitive with others and more aware of myself. Rather than worrying about beating someone else, I just worry about doing the best I can. I know how I can ski now, and if I feel I did the best that I can, then I'm psyched.

"The national ski team looks at college athletes as though they've given up. That's unfortunate. I've learned my mental game in college. Now when I race I'm literally able to separate what I'm doing from everything else in my life. Once I'm in the gate, I'm focused and the adrenaline is going. Time stands still."

PAOLA PEACOCK-VILLADA '03

Sport: Figure Skating Major: Sociology

"Collegiate skating is only about three or four years old. It's difficult to be a club sport because we have to do a lot of the organizational work on our own. We have to fight for ice time, even against the intramural hockey league.

"Skating requires an immense amount of body and mind control. Yet for me, skating is a kind of escape. Because you have to concentrate so much on what you're doing, it clears your mind. I don't have time to think about school and other things. I don't know if it has something to do with the cold air, but skating is amazingly refreshing. The fact that you can glide and skate fast is freeing, almost like flying. There's nothing else out there like the ice."

SARAH LONDON '01

Sport: Crew Major: History

"Crew is an enormous time and psychological commitment. Technically the winter is our off-season, but it's just not. It's really intense. It's psychologically challenging to train every day in the basement of the gym. The rowing machines are mentally the toughest thing I've ever dealt with. It's just you by yourself on this machine.

"I like being in the presence of other female athletes. They are really confident. We face a lot of the same attitudes that all women face, in that we're expected to be thin and small. For rowing you really have to put on muscle, have to put on mass. For the male rowers, the more they lift and strut around and grunt, the more powerful they are as rowers, and as men. That's an acceptable way for a guy to be. For women, putting on muscle is more complicated in terms of heterosexual standards. It's rewarding to be in all-female athletic environments where you feel that everyone's really psyched about their bodies and psyched to be as powerful as they are."

SARAH DAMON '02

Sport: Softball Major: Psychology

"I'm very hard on myself. It's my downfall, my weakness in sports. I always want to be the best. I'm in competition with myself all the time. If I make an error I get very upset. I don't show it on the field, but I'll go home and sit in bed and think whydid Ido this, I should have had that ball I love winning. I hate to lose. I hate it more than anything. It's my nemesis.

"It's hard to be at a really prestigious school and be an athlete and not be looked down upon. People think, oh, she's a jock or a brute or a lesbian—you get all this name-calling. People do it all the time.

"Seeing my teammates always puts a smile on my face. They're like my sisters. I can go to my captains with issues that have nothing to do with sports. It's like instant family. I love going to practice. I love my team."

ALLISON CARDLIN '01

Sport: Track and Field (Shot Put) Major: Earth Sciences

"I love when I release a shot and I know it's a good one, then they read the mark and it's my best score. I'll admit, I like winning. My best meet was two years ago. A girl from Brown who's my major competition was beating me, but I beat her on my last throw. She cried. It was just wonderful. I mean I felt bad, but it's whoever s better, you know?

"I get very nervous when I compete. I try to do breathing exercises. They don't always work. I can't watch my competitors throw. I don't watch their marks. I go over to the corner and put on my earphones and try not to hear the marks or the screams if they throw really well. I try not to psych myself out."

SHAINA DAMM '02

Sport: Track and Field (Heptathlon and Pentathlon) Major: Engineering

"It's tough to do athletics here, with four hours of practice every day, but it keeps me in line. I get my work done because I'm not allowed to procrastinate.

"I like to see how far I can make myself go. I love the feeling of finishing a heptathlon: complete exhaustion."

MARY MCVEIGH '03

Sport: Soccer Major: Philosophy

"I love playing soccer. It's a huge release for me to be able to do something that's good for me and that helps me meet people. You end up building a lot of your relationships around soccer. When so many other people depend on you, you become more giving. If I were sick I wouldn't want to sit out a practice, because I know that without me there that's one less person for my teammates to play with. You become more selfless, you think more as a group than as an individual.

"Dealing with time conflicts can be really hard. There have been so many times when I've had to miss class for soccer. I've had to talk to my professors and tell them that I understand that academics are first, but I have this commitment and it doesn't mean that I'm blowing off your class or that I don't want to learn. It just means that this is the only opportunity for me to do this sport."

LINDSAY REYNOLDS '03

Sport: Ultimate Frisbee

Major: Environmental Biology

"Learning to throw a Frisbee is hard at first, but if you go out and practice your throws consistently you see improvement pretty quickly. What's interesting about ultimate is that there's no referee. All of the rules of the game are followed and enforced by your teammates and your opponents. There's a real spirit of sportsmanship because you have to be honest about your play.

"I like playing a club sport because it gives me freedom to do things besides sports. I like the flexibility."

SAM BERDINKA '01

Sport: Basketball Major: Psychology

"There are people who can't play a sport, who either wish they were skilled enough to play at a Division I level or who physically can't run or do something else that I take so for granted. So if you're athletic and you're blessed with this God-given talent, then you go out there and dog it and don't try as hard as you can, why bother? If it's worth playing, it's worth giving it your all.

"I think it's harder for women than men to separate athletics from the other aspects of life. Guys can get into a fight at practice over a bad call, and they're still buddies afterwards. If I get into a fight with a teammate in practice, if I get pissed off and say something to somebody just because we're losing, I have a feeling it would carry over much more. There's an etiquette for women. It's not only about basketball when it's a girls' team. My coaches, who are female, want to know about the rest of your life. If I have a bad day on the court, my coaches tend to think there's something wrong in the rest of my life, and they want to talk about it. But when I'm on the court I'm only thinking about basketball."

JULIAN JOYCE '01

Sport: Field Hockey Major: History

"As a freshman athlete, you automatically have a peer group of women who support you. Having older teammates as a resource was always something that I loved. They let you make your freshman mistakes, but they keep an eye on you and help you figure out a little bit earlier what your priorities should be in college.

"Away games can create conflicts between coaches and professors, with the student in the middle. Traveling on Fridays for Saturday games means missing Friday classes. Your coaches are saying, 'We're leaving today at 10 and you need to figure out a way to come. This is your commitment to the team.' But then you have your professors saying, 'You have to be in class. It doesn't do you any good to just get the notes from someone. What is your commitment here?' I was often really angry when professors questioned my commitment to my studies because I never did. The only solution I found was to prove the professor wrong by getting an A on the paper or going to extra lectures. With some professors you start out at a lower level once they find out you're an athlete, but it's getting better."

VIVIAN LEE '03

Sport: Golf Major: Economics

"Golf is traditionally a man's sport. There are a lot of courses out there that are menonly. For the Ivy League championships both the women and men used to play at a big course in New York. But now the women play on a new course in New Jersey. The men play on a different course, which women aren't allowed to play on. Ours is still a nice course, but the coaches get upset—they think the courses should be equal. It really is unfair. Guys' courses are 10 times better than girls' courses. But women's golf is reaching new levels. I'm optimistic about the future."

KIM LONGO '01

Sport: Boxing Major: Psychology

"People see boxing as an unusual sport for women. It's good to do things that break stereotypes. Some people have misperceptions about what can and can't do, what they like to do. When I tell people that I do boxing, they kind of stop. I guess I don't look like a typical boxer. It appeals to me to change how they think about women."

"I love my team," says softball pitcher Sarah Damon (above), shown with shot-putter Allison Cardlin and rowers Jillian Buhler and Sarah London.

Lily Mac Lean is a history major from Sudbury,Massachusetts.