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 The first year after of high school can be filled with new challenges, unexpected success, surprising disappointment, homesickness, bad dining hall food, new friends and late nights.  Knowing the adjustment isn't always easy, we've asked ESPN RISE intern Hilary May, herself a high school standout at Corona del Mar CA and a collegiate runner at Harvard, to contact some of last year's top prep track and field athletes and find out how things are going...one year out.  Of course, it's only fair we ask Hilary to go first, with some reflections on her own first year at Harvard University.

 
                                                                         Hilary May


Heading off to Harvard for cross-country pre-season was the most exciting day of my life.  I was about to spend the next four years of my life in Cambridge, the college student’s dream town, and training with a brilliant young coach and ‘wicked smaht’ teammates.  Unfortunately my confidence soon fizzled when I couldn’t seem to perform to my expectations.

Looking back, I still believe there was nothing I could have done differently to better prepare myself for adapting to freshman year.  In high school, all I had to worry about was completing my schoolwork on time and performing at practice in my familiar hometown.  Now, I was faced with the demands of adult life.  I had to do my own laundry, decide when and what to eat, make sure I got enough sleep, get all my school work done, try to have a social life, and train at a higher intensity then ever before.  Soon, I was sleep deprived and my running performance had taken a serious dip.

I was happy with the friendships I had formed with my teammates, and the stellar coaching I was getting from the program, but my performances were extremely disappointing.  Finding the balance between schoolwork, social life, sleep, and running seemed impossible.  I guess you could say that I was a freshman in dire need of a red-shirt year.

Suddenly, I was also a California girl in need of a tan.  It was October, windy and rainy.  By November, I had gained a new respect for East Coast runners.  Everyone in California warned me about the brutal New England weather, but until I experienced an eight-mile run in twenty degrees along the Charles River, I hadn’t realized the severity of it.  But as my teammates from the East Coast remind me: bad weather makes you tougher.  Trying to put a positive spin on it, at least this meant I could expand my running wardrobe to meet the demands of four seasons rather than just one!

Taking it indoors

It turned out I did not need much running attire because starting in January we ran inside.  I never expected I would be able to say that I had regularly gone for ten-mile runs indoors.  It sounded impossible.  But we did it on Harvard’s track with ease.  Competing on the indoor track did require some adaptation, however, that I could not get the hang of until my sophomore year.

I was relieved to finally leave the CIF-Southern Section after four years, and face some new, diverse competition.  But that relief was short-lived, because at every meet there were ex-Southern Section girls dominating everywhere I turned!  Kate Grace at Yale (Marlborough), the Kim sisters at Penn (Sunny Hills), and Brooke Russell at Princeton (Hart).  But it turned out to be comforting to see familiar names and faces at meets.

There were "college experience" milestones during my Freshman year: my first Harvard-Yale football game, my first college party, studying like crazy for my first college final, hosting a track recruit for the first time.  But my favorite moment of Freshman year was being issued my Harvard uniform.  When the equipment staff handed it over to me, I shivered with excitement over representing the Crimson.

Six-hour bus ride fun

The best times I had that year were not on a Saturday night at a party and definitely not in the library.  But they were not at the finish line either.  Instead, they were the six-hour bus rides with the track team coming home from meets.  No matter how we performed at the meet, we were always laughing hysterically for hours on the bus.  And although we tended to garner some death stares from others who were trying to study, they could not resist our distraction for long and ended up joining our fun.

Although my Freshman year was not at all what I expected performance-wise, Coach Saretsky and my supportive teammates at Harvard did not let me give up on my goals.  Instead, my coaches and teammates helped spur me to the highest success I have ever accomplished during my sophomore year at Harvard.  So in the end, it was all good.


Stats:

High School (Corona del Mar, Costa Mesa, CA): 1600m 4:54:94; 800m 2:14:95

Frosh College: 1500m 4:39:32; 800m 2:15

Soph College: 1500m: 4:32:00; 1000m 2:50:46; 800m 2:08:70


Photos: headshot - GoCrimson.com; middle, submitted by Hilary May; bottom, Carlson Family


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