Harvard University is the biggest sports school in the country.
This statement may come off as laughable to anyone who longingly watches ESPN’s College Gameday from their common room every weekend, but it is technically correct. The school has 42 varsity sports, more than any other Division 1 program, with approximately 20% of the student body participating in one of them. Despite sports being such an outsized part of student life, Harvard’s $30 million athletics budget pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions other schools spend on their sports. This scenario begs the question: do Harvard athletes—many of whom could have competed for a much larger program—receive a true Division 1 experience?
Harvard’s allure to athletes does not stem from purely athletics. “I really didn’t want to sacrifice having a good education,” said Daniel Falode ’25, who competes in the Triple Jump for the Varsity Track & Field Team. “I came to Harvard because I felt they had a really good balance of both academics and athletics.” Lightweight rower Ryan McCarthy ’24 echoed the sentiment in even simpler terms—“I accepted their offer because you can’t really say no to Harvard,” he said.
While the academic opportunity Harvard provides is certainly appealing, it makes juggling between school and sports even more difficult. Falode praised his coach for helping him achieve this. “[He] sends out a form for all the people in his group at the beginning of the semester so that he knows when everyone has which class and plans practice times accordingly,” Falode said. Women’s Soccer Team captain Jade Rose ’24 also highlighted the built-in support system that being on a team provides. “It’s pretty normal that a senior or an upperclassman of any kind will pull aside all the freshmen and help them go through the course catalog—which we know is a mess—and help them pick classes,” she said.
Harvard athletes may have sought out a more rigorous educational experience than they needed to, but that does not mean their desire to compete at the highest level ended when they arrived in Cambridge. Falode won his individual event and helped his team to the overall victory at the Ivy League championships last spring, and both the Women’s Soccer and Men’s Lightweight Crew teams are consistently ranked among the best in the country.
Their facilities do not necessarily reflect these performances, however. Though Rose and McCarthy emphasized that they were happy with the resources provided for them, they also acknowledged room for improvement.
Rose’s biggest gripe with the program is its lack of a soccer-specific field. “We play on Jordan, which is technically the lacrosse field, and the renovations were paid for by the lacrosse teams,” she said. Jordan Field is made of artificial turf, a surface banned by FIFA for World Cup competitions due to safety concerns. Alternatively, the soccer team’s grass option of Ohiri field does not serve them any better. “It’s extremely bumpy. Sometimes it’s honestly a hazard to play on and rolling our ankles could be a very real possibility,” said Rose.
McCarthy’s rowing career has given him a unique perspective on the state of Harvard’s athletic facilities. He readily admitted that the recent renovation project of Newell Boathouse was well overdue but still praised the history the building holds. Though Newell has not yet reopened, the similarly redone Weld Boathouse (which the men’s teams are temporarily sharing with the women’s) elicited criticism from McCarthy. “I feel like they hired someone [for the renovations] that didn’t know anything about rowing,” he said. He specifically pointed out that their erg room had no ventilation and that their boat bays were extremely narrow. “It’s not that you can’t row or do what you need to do, they just could have thought through some of these things a little more,” he said.
Falode was more universal in his praise. “I really think we have an excellent indoor facility, which we use most of the year because it’s cold,” he said. “The facility’s always open, has a really good surface, a good jumps pit, [and] a good throwing area.” He also praised the training staff for helping athletes stay healthy throughout the season, something Rose and McCarthy agreed with. “I think the training rooms are great,” McCarthy said. Rose also pointed to the marked improvements in other aspects of athletes’ health since her first year at Harvard. “If you look at nutrition, sports psychology, or just psychology in general, I think there’s been massive growth in that area,” she said.
Perhaps the most crucial factor in an athlete’s experience is whether they feel they have the opportunity to improve in their sport during their time at Harvard. Falode expressed that he did, but also explained that Harvard differed from other universities. “As you become a junior, as you become a senior…the focus moves away from athletics and onto academics. Whereas in some of these top D1 colleges, as you move in towards your junior and senior year and people are trying to make teams, trying to go pro, the level of training really increases,” he said. Falode explained that this shift from academics to athletics in other schools can cause differences in results.
Rose agrees with this explanation while wishing those same opportunities could be provided for Harvard students. “Here we are very much students first and athletes second, and I think there could definitely be more of an even balance,” she said. “Personally, I plan to go to Europe and play professional soccer until my body says ‘no more.’ And that’s not to say I won’t use my Harvard degree once I graduate. I do plan on hopefully going to law school when that time comes,” she said. That time is still years down the road for Rose, and she expressed her wishes for her short-term plans to be taken more seriously.
All three athletes interviewed made their appreciation for their programs clear while also admitting that their experiences at Harvard are a bit different. Like many aspects of student life at Harvard, public opinion of the sports department seems to be a mixed bag. While the school may never boast the endless resources of more sports oriented universities like Ohio State, Alabama, or Michigan, the athletes interviewed—as well as countless more—will continue to push on in their pursuit of both academic and athletic excellence.
Declan Buckley ’24 (declanbuckley@college.harvard.edu) saw his sports career peak in high school.