Mayer Leaves Her Field Of Dreams

If you were to stop at the corner of Linden and Mt. Auburn to peer into the first-floor window of Claverly Hall--straight to the heart of resident Stephanie M. Mayer '97-'99--the mantle of field hockey photos, a crew erg exercise machine parked in a corner and umbro shorts slung lazily across Mayer's open futon would clue you in right away.

Mayer is a jock for life, but unlike most campus athletes with a cache of high school honors and training camp credentials who were recruited by the College, she is unable to play a varsity sport--although she would give anything to take the field.

After slide tackling a ball during a field hockey game at Harvard, Mayer experienced a mild form of amnesia that knocked out segments of her short term memory, leading her to take two years off and forever barring her from the realm of campus contact sports.

To any athlete, a suspension from their sport of choice can seem like a death sentence and for Mayer, injury meant a reevaluation of her life.

"It still feels so unfinished," Mayer says, "I guess it's like they say--if you never do what you wanted to do, you never get to know how good you might have been."

And Mayer had promise.

The first student from Rhinebeck High School--a rural outpost in upstate New York with a graduating class of 64--to attend Harvard, Mayer harbors worries even now that it was her athletic record that skyrocketed her off the waiting list and into Mathews Hall in 1995.

"A huge part of my coming to Harvard was that I wanted to play with this specific team," she says, recalling the game tapes and recruit calls that flowed in and out of the Mayer household during her junior year.

Daughter of the high school physics teacher and a self-identified faculty brat, ("In other words, no dates," she says) Mayer turned an invitation by one of her four older siblings to try field hockey into a five-year stint playing goalie for the high school team.

"I'd never even seen field hockey before. I didn't know if you shot it through a hoop or kicked it like a football," Mayer says of her first time playing goalie at age 14, a time when the now 6-foot 1-inch ponytailed defensive player saw herself as "awkward" and "just really lumbersome and slothlike."

In the goal, clad in armor that included hip pads, shin guards, kickers--field hockey goalie boots--and a pelvic guard, (for crotch shots teammates nicknamed "flying birth control") Mayer became a defensive machine as passionate about the sport as she was skilled at perfecting it. Although she played basketball and track in the off-season, Mayer's sights increasingly concentrated on field hockey.

"I competed against myself," she says. "It was definitely the sport I was most driven to play. I'd wake up in the morning and get to school early so I could go in and play, then bring the equipment home or have people take shots on me after [practice]."

Grabbing a wooden framed picture from the mantle, Mayer indicates a helmeted figure in jersey number 24 (that was the biggest jersey they had) surrounded by smiling teammates in pleated hockey skirts.

"That was the day we beat [rival] Pine Plains," she recalled, pulling out another picture, similarly posed with her own face at the center of a crowd of Harvard jersies. Her smile slowly fades.

"I can't remember who we played that day," Mayer says. "My number was 00. Double nothing."

Mayer says she was actively recruited by coach Sue Caples and, although wait listed, was eventually admitted to the College and drafted to the varsity team as backup goalie.

As the season progressed, Mayer discovered the perks of being a Harvard athlete. The equipment was fancier, a laundry service cleaned her dirty jersies and instead of the worn green vinyl seats of Rhinebeck buses, Harvard had reclining cushioned numbers with televisions in the aisles.

"It was like nothing I'd ever seen before--they had a laundry service for your clothes after practice, and if you wanted to lift they had a weight room," says Mayer, noting that back in Rhinebeck the sole weight machine was relegated to the tech-ed room.

But as everyone knows, being an athlete at Harvard means sacrificing large chunks of time to practice and games.

"It was a significant part of my life--but I gave it gladly," she says.

As she neared the end of her first season--an exhausting an exhilarating drill in new equipment and team relations--Mayer felt her dream taking shape.

Then came the accident that would put her life in limbo for the next two years.

After diving, or slide-tackling, a ball during a game at the end of the season, Mayer sustained a concussion that caused short term memory loss and eventually forced her to leave school--and the team.

"At first, I was seeing double and vomiting, but then I just couldn't remember things...like, I'd be on my way to class, and forget where I was going," Mayer says of the weeks of confusion after her injury.

"I thought everyone felt the way I did, that nothing was wrong," she says.

But something was wrong, and Mayer returned home without taking her final exams. Diagnosed with indeterminable short-term memory loss, Mayer decided to work at home (not an easy task, she says, considering that no one wanted to hire someone with a head injury) for a semester and then joined City Year to volunteer for 10 months before returning to college.

"That was when the doubts came," Mayer says of returning to school after numerous memory tests left her eligible for class, but not the team.

"It still hadn't hit me that I wouldn't have field hockey [because] I had been living with it for so long," she says.

"At Harvard, I definitely felt I was here to play sports. But then I realized that I had a brain and I was going to use it."

Using her brain eventually meant loading up on pre-med requirements and starting a new year of first-year activities.

"You really can't take more than one ice cream bash," jokes Mayer, recalling the sense of loss she felt watching fellow students take the field during her first year back on campus.

"It was painful because I really wanted to be out there and I just couldn't [be]. It wasn't like a broken arm that heals," she says. "I knew it was over and after that I deliberately didn't make it a part of my life."

Instead, Mayer joined University Lutheran Church (UNILU) soup kitchen, eventually becoming administrative director and working at the Saint James soup kitchen the following summer.

"I needed a place to go and [UNILU] was it...a place where the people were really genuine and where they didn't know me just from sports," Mayer says.

Although she is allowed time-and-a-half for exams, Mayer didn't exercise the option for her last two final exams and she doesn't plan to this year because she sees it as "special treatment" despite her memory problems. Currently playing intramural crew and volleyball while hard at work on her cognitive science concentration Mayer describes her interests in studying memory and memory loss as "self selecting."

Taking a quick glance around the room filled with photos that now seem invisibly labeled "before" and "after," Mayer smiles and turns back to a pile of soft cover photo albums.

"I really need the pictures to remind me--I forget stuff unless I look at them or write it down," she says, flipping through shots of friends clowning in the kitchen at UNILU.

Battling for her memory is an ongoing struggle, but Mayer says the ordeal has taught her important life lessons.

"I really felt like when I got into Harvard it was this great gift...that's different now: it's tempered. But I'm just as enthusiastic.

But as everyone knows, being an athlete at Harvard means sacrificing large chunks of time to practice and games.

"It was a significant part of my life--but I gave it gladly," she says.

As she neared the end of her first season--an exhausting an exhilarating drill in new equipment and team relations--Mayer felt her dream taking shape.

Then came the accident that would put her life in limbo for the next two years.

After diving, or slide-tackling, a ball during a game at the end of the season, Mayer sustained a concussion that caused short term memory loss and eventually forced her to leave school--and the team.

"At first, I was seeing double and vomiting, but then I just couldn't remember things...like, I'd be on my way to class, and forget where I was going," Mayer says of the weeks of confusion after her injury.

"I thought everyone felt the way I did, that nothing was wrong," she says.

But something was wrong, and Mayer returned home without taking her final exams. Diagnosed with indeterminable short-term memory loss, Mayer decided to work at home (not an easy task, she says, considering that no one wanted to hire someone with a head injury) for a semester and then joined City Year to volunteer for 10 months before returning to college.

"That was when the doubts came," Mayer says of returning to school after numerous memory tests left her eligible for class, but not the team.

"It still hadn't hit me that I wouldn't have field hockey [because] I had been living with it for so long," she says.

"At Harvard, I definitely felt I was here to play sports. But then I realized that I had a brain and I was going to use it."

Using her brain eventually meant loading up on pre-med requirements and starting a new year of first-year activities.

"You really can't take more than one ice cream bash," jokes Mayer, recalling the sense of loss she felt watching fellow students take the field during her first year back on campus.

"It was painful because I really wanted to be out there and I just couldn't [be]. It wasn't like a broken arm that heals," she says. "I knew it was over and after that I deliberately didn't make it a part of my life."

Instead, Mayer joined University Lutheran Church (UNILU) soup kitchen, eventually becoming administrative director and working at the Saint James soup kitchen the following summer.

"I needed a place to go and [UNILU] was it...a place where the people were really genuine and where they didn't know me just from sports," Mayer says.

Although she is allowed time-and-a-half for exams, Mayer didn't exercise the option for her last two final exams and she doesn't plan to this year because she sees it as "special treatment" despite her memory problems. Currently playing intramural crew and volleyball while hard at work on her cognitive science concentration Mayer describes her interests in studying memory and memory loss as "self selecting."

Taking a quick glance around the room filled with photos that now seem invisibly labeled "before" and "after," Mayer smiles and turns back to a pile of soft cover photo albums.

"I really need the pictures to remind me--I forget stuff unless I look at them or write it down," she says, flipping through shots of friends clowning in the kitchen at UNILU.

Battling for her memory is an ongoing struggle, but Mayer says the ordeal has taught her important life lessons.

"I really felt like when I got into Harvard it was this great gift...that's different now: it's tempered. But I'm just as enthusiastic.