Full Time

The endings of truly great stories linger a long time in our minds. We yearn for just a few more pages, a few more moments to revel in a masterfully-shaped adventure, to live vicariously through unreal characters who move us in very real ways, or simply to ponder and reflect on the surreal. The finality of an ending can offer a slight sadness that there is nothing more to experience, but also a satisfied sense that all has been done.

By the time this column goes to press, its author will be happily looking back on the end of an impossible story that began on a hot August day in Colorado seven years ago and ended on a cold New England weekend in New Hampshire approximately 48 hours ago. The Harvard Women’s Rugby team, the 2018 Ivy League 15s champions, defeated Quinnipiac University 47-8 the day before the Game to secure a National Intercollegiate Rugby Association championship match against Dartmouth two days later. We lost this championship match in an intense and hard-fought battle, but this was an ending to a chapter of my life that I’ll not soon forget.

The beginning of this story seven years ago, very much unlike the arrival of Tolkien’s “Long-Expected Party” in the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring, was certainly anything but expected. If you had told my 15-year-old teenage self that I’d have the privilege of representing Harvard University as a member of its varsity rugby team, I surely would have scoffed at such a notion. Rugby was only something I did to pass the time until lacrosse season started, and only something I picked up to fulfill my school’s fall sport requirement with something other than field hockey.

As great stories often do, the novelty of a new adventure, colorful characters, and the thrill of battle slowly reeled me in, and I was enthralled by a sport and teammates who delivered on all the above. The providence of some divine writer must have shaped the plot of this story just so that I could be a part of Harvard rugby’s first full varsity recruiting class. In the last few years on Harvard’s brand-new rugby field, I’ve shared an incredible journey with a fellowship of steadfast friends and exceptional athletes. An eclectic, diverse group of recruits and walk-ons coalesced passionately around a shared mission in a powerful way that I believe is unique to competitive sport, where bodies and well-being are put on the line in a manner starkly different than academic or extracurricular interest.

The story of this team over the last four years is truly the stuff of miracles and a story of radical love. Surely, not every day was easy, and some difficult and painful times transpired as we wrestled with shaping our identity as an elite collegiate rugby program. We lost big games. We underwent major cultural and institutional changes. We did not always choose to be there for our teammates. We did not always choose unity. We did not always choose to play for sheer love of the game. But we learned, slowly, to make those choices every day in our battles with our personal and collective foibles and flaws, even if we didn’t realize how much we were growing as individuals and as a team.

Tolkien’s formidable contemporary C.S. Lewis once marveled at how “day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different.” Indeed, grinding through day after day, month after month, year after year of practices, lifts, and competitions felt like nothing special nor even anything particularly enjoyable at times. But now, walking off the pitch for the very last time and unlacing my cleats to hang them up for good, I certainly feel like nothing is the same. I am not the same.

It has been the greatest joy and honor to journey with this team to what feels like Mordor and back, to have traversed the extremes of exhilarating victories and crushing defeats with a once-in-a-lifetime team. I may be guilty of over-sentimentalizing or over-romanticizing what is understandably sometimes criticized as an elitist, exclusive endeavor (just look at some of the revelations about athletic recruiting in the admissions trial), but the sacrifices teammates make for each other are perhaps some of the most authentic expressions of love we can make at this university, not conditioned upon anything but our commitment to each other.

These are sacrifices of time, sacrifices that ask us to put our bodies on the line for others, and responsibilities of stewardship. It is no small privilege to represent the University and display our commitment to its values and to each other in such a visceral way as bearing the crimson “H” on our jerseys. As the pages of my senior year story at Harvard continue to flip by and the end of my college days looms imminently, I am even more grateful for those sacrifices and privileges of calling myself a member of the rugby team.

Grace M. Chao ’19 is an Economics concentrator in Mather House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.