Maia Ramsden ’24 has had quite the year. After an outstanding first two seasons with the Crimson, she won the Women’s 1500m at the 2023 NCAA Outdoor National Championships in June, becoming the first New Zealander to ever win the event. She followed up this historic win by reaching even greater heights in her senior year—she recently recorded the second-fastest women’s collegiate mile time ever and is slated to make her debut for the Kiwis at the World Indoor Athletics Championships in March.
While she is now a fixture in the American college running world, Ramsden’s career path—and life—has spanned multiple continents. She got her start in her hometown of Wellington, New Zealand at the age of five. “The most common cereal brand at home is called Weet-Bix, and they put on kids’ triathlons that are a bit of an institution, so I used to do a bunch of those,” she said. Moves to the Solomon Islands and Fiji saw her focus switch to track before she ultimately ended up in Ethiopia for high school. “Running is central to that place,” she explained. “Moving there, I only became more involved in the sport, and my love for it as a fan and spectator grew too.”
Wanting to continue running and having family roots in the U.S. made coming to America for college a natural choice for Ramsden. However, her plans for a freshman season were completely upended when Harvard canceled all sports for the 2020-2021 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ramsden sees the silver lining when looking back on her transition. “I feel grateful for that time because I got to develop a strong relationship with my teammates and my coach, and figure out the running piece from a physical standpoint without having to worry about the competitive bit or school being a really big time commitment.”
This extra time to learn the ropes proved invaluable once things opened back up the next year. While most sports are centered around a single season, runners compete in all three, going from cross country in the fall to indoor and outdoor track in the winter and spring. This constant competition leaves little room for other parts of life, particularly as Ramsden prepares to submit her senior thesis, which focuses on the relationship between Pacific poets and climate change migration. While she readily admits it might be easier to focus on running at a different school, she does not necessarily wish for it. “It’s a push and pull, but I don’t think I’ll ever regret this decision,” she said. “I’ve had a great experience here.”
Take one look at Ramsden’s results and it is easy to see why she feels that way. Her accomplishments continue to grow, but her National Championship understandably stands above the rest. “That was a pretty big, I would say life-changing moment,” she said. “As crazy as that is to say, it opened a lot of doors.” However, Ramsden’s fondest memories of that week are not restricted to crossing the finish line first. She was quick to point to her team’s ninth-place overall finish—its best since 1989. “It’s a really huge deal, especially because we don’t have scholarships, so we’re not necessarily attracting the same sort of talent out of high school that other schools are, and we obviously have a different academic balance,” she said. “To have the team do that well as well was really special to be a part of.”
Performances like that one have brought Ramsden a lot of attention—including from Athletics New Zealand (ANZ), who selected her to compete in the 1500m against the world’s best next month. She was also eligible to compete for the U.S. thanks to dual citizenship through her mother’s family. However, there was never a question of which country Ramsden wanted to represent. “I’d never raced in the U.S. until coming to college, and even then, until last weekend, I had only ever raced at collegiate meets,” she said. “Whereas in New Zealand I’m part of this other club, I’ve represented my city before, and I’ve got this great community of running friends there.” She also highlighted ANZ’s support for her as a citizen competing overseas as a deciding factor. “I’m sure if I had really wanted to [race for the U.S.], I had the choice…but socio emotionally I didn’t think of it as a choice.”
In addition to further athletic opportunities, Ramsden’s success gave her the chance to sign a Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deal with On, an up-and-coming sportswear company. She emphasized her excitement about working with an environmentally conscious company whose shoes she already loved. Her thoughts on NIL as a whole are more complex. “The deals are happening almost ahead of regulation… Most institutions don’t really know how to navigate that yet,” she said. She pointed to the inequality of income being offered to different sports as well as the dangers of offering brand deals to 18-year-olds still trying to find their way in life. On the other hand, she praised the initiative for allowing athletes to profit from their performance and preparing them for the world they might face as professionals.
This last point is especially important for Ramsden, who hopes to parlay an excellent college athletics career into a full-time one. “I’m going to take a break from school for a little and give the running thing a real shot while my body is at its prime,” she said. “I hope to be running for as long as my body and mind are happy with it.” Whenever she ultimately hangs up her spikes, she plans to return to academia to begin pursuing her Master’s and PhD.
For now, however, Ramsden’s focus remains on the races ahead of her. She will fly to Glasgow in two weeks to compete at Worlds, sandwiched between the Ivy League and National Indoor Championships. After that, the road to defend her national title begins.
Declan Buckley ’24 (declanbuckley@college.harvard.edu) writes Sports for the Independent.