MOST IMPROVED FEMALE ATHLETE: Nicky Grant

Harvard thrower Nicky Grant walked on to the women’s track and field team as an unheralded freshman. She walked off as an NCAA championship competitor.

A year ago, the idea of Grant earning a ranking among the top 20 in the country in the hammer throw seemed farfetched. She had shown marked improvement during her junior year, achieving a 52.40-meter throw against Yale to move to second on the school’s performance list. But she’d need another seven-meter improvement to be a serious national competitor. In May of her senior campaign, in a relaxed meet at Princeton, she achieved that goal.

“The outdoor season had never been my best, so I really had no expectations coming into it,” Grant said.

If there was any event in which Grant would seem to have an NCAA chance, it was the indoor weight throw. She had set the school record in the weight her sophomore year, and expanded that by 20 centimeters to 17.71 meters to start her junior year, despite opening the season with a broken toe.

“It was very inspiring to see her make that throw,” said Marna Schutte ’01, the co-captain of the track team at the time. “You wouldn’t expect her to have even a good throw with an injury like that, but she had a great throw.”

Harvard Coach Frank Haggerty always pointed out that Grant could improve another two feet if her toe ever healed.

She did much more than that. By the end of the season, she had upped her mark to 18.20 meters and advanced to 31st on the national performance list.

Then in her senior year, she crushed her previous mark with an 18.90-meter throw.

“It was surprisingly easy and felt really good, so I look forward to building on that,” she said.

But she never was able to top that performance. She did have a successful season by Ivy standards. She led Harvard to a one-two-three finish in the weight throw at the Indoor Heptagonal Championships and broke a meet record with an 18.69-meter performance. But she finished just 27th in the final national performance list—not high enough to make NCAAs.

So Grant’s dreams of an NCAA appearance then rested on the hammer throw in the outdoor season.

She started her season with a respectable performance of 51.87 meters, which was nothing spectacular. But a week later, in Harvard’s only home meet of the year, Grant had a breakthrough performance—55.80 meters. Two weeks later, Grant exceeded that effort with a 56.82-meter performance against Ivy rival Yale.

“After a good but slightly disappointing indoor season, things are definitely looking up,” Grant said.

The school and Ivy record in the hammer were hers, but she still needed to improve by another two meters to have a legitimate NCAA chance.

A week after the Yale meet, she had two opportunities to keep the momentum going, one at the Penn Relays and one at New Hampshire. But at each meet, the weather kept her down.

“In track, you have to deal with the weather and make adjustments and we just couldn’t do it,” Grant said. “But that’s over now and at this point we have our sights set on performing well at Heps.”

Outdoor Heptagonals, the biggest team meet of the year, was in two weeks. Grant didn’t want to wait that long. She competed solo at Princeton during the weekend between Penn and Heps.

The relaxing nature of the meet helped her come into her own. There she reached the true NCAA threshold with a performance of 59.42 meters. An NCAA appearance in Baton Rogue, a top-20 national finish, was all but assured.

Grant didn’t stop there, though. At Outdoor Heps, she topped her previous effort with a throw of 59.59 meters and crushed the previous meet record. Her ascent was complete.

The credit, she felt, wasn’t hers alone.

“My coaches and teammates have been very supportive,” Grant said. “These results are just as much theirs as they are mine. They are a testament to four years of our hard work. We have all been really pushing each other in practice, and it has helped a lot.”

Among those teammates were sophomore Johanna Doyle, who was neck-and-neck with Grant in the hammer throw for much of the past two years, and sophomore BreeAnna Gibson.

Grant did not top her performance at Heps in either of her final two collegiate meets. In unfavorable conditions at the ECAC meet, she won with a 57-meter throw. As May wound down, she took her long-awaited trip to Baton Rogue.

At NCAAs, her preliminary results fell below expectations—54.81 meters, 55.15 meters and a foul, good for 17th place. Even if she had matched her personal best, it wouldn’t have been enough to finish in the top nine and advance to the finals.

For Grant, to rise from no honors to All-American honors in just one season proved to be just a bit too much to ask for. But what she did accomplish—rising to the top of her league and earning a trip to NCAAs—will serve as inspiration for years to come.

“The improvements I’ve experienced this year have been incredible,” Grant said. “It really has been a dream come true.”

The experience of NCAAs was by no means the end of the road for Grant. She views it as stepping stone for greater things. After so much marked improvement this year, she has ambitions to compete for the Jamaican national team and reach the World Championships someday.

“People are telling me that I have so much more left in me,” Grant said. “I hear that, I think that and I’m going to run with that.”

Nicky Grant

Key Hammer Throw Performances (IN meters)

Dates Meet Performance

March 29-30 Bayou Classic 51.87

April 6 Brown/Cornell 55.80

April 20 Yale 56.82

May 4 Princeton Invitational 59.42

May 11-12 Outdoor Heptagonals 59.59

May 18-19 ECAC Championships 57.22

May 29 NCAA Championships 55.15