When I came to Harvard in 2000, I’d played squash a long time, but it had always felt like an individual sport. It wasn’t until I came to Harvard that I learned how to play it as part of a team, and that’s a gift for which I’ll be forever grateful. From the first day I came to Harvard, the teams and my coaches, Baj and Mo, made me feel at home. The transition to college can be hard, and for me it was, but it was such a source of strength and comfort to be so immediately made part of that second family.

It helped that my actual sister, Colby, was on the team with me: to be able to play with her at the college level, go to dinners with her after practice, look to her for strength when a match or a day wasn’t going as I’d hoped, was such a miraculous good fortune. It also helped that my teammates became some of the best friends I’ve ever had: Margaret Gerety, Carlin Wing, Katie Gregory, Virginia Yinger, Ziggy Whitman, Thomas Storch, Lindsay Press, and so many others made me feel included, cared for, and inspired from the first day, and I think in some ways what I value most about my time playing Harvard Squash has less to do with what I learned about playing sports and competing, and more to do with what I learned about how to be a friend. Those teammates set examples for me that, all these years later, I’m still striving to live up to.

I also want to thank Mo and Baj for their guidance and their constant hard work on our behalf. Coach Mo is here tonight, and he, especially, made me feel at home, inviting me to his kids’ birthday parties, talking to me for hours on end in the van, and always, after a hard match, calling me “champ.” And, lastly and most importantly, I want to thank my parents, who did their best to make me feel at home at Harvard by coming up nearly every weekend to watch just about every match we played. My father played squash at Harvard and my mother played squash at Penn, and from the first time I picked up a racket, they showed me what it was to work hard, to care deeply, to take joy in playing, and to take refuge in practicing a technique. I rely on those skills every day, and it’s so nice to be given this opportunity to thank them, my coaches, and my teammates for helping me find them in the first place.