The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2023
McCarthy Excels On the Court and On the Field By MAIREAD B. BAKER
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CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
ome Harvard students devote most of their time to studies, others spend hours split between the classroom and the field, while others begin their morning in one jersey and end their day in another. Well, just one: graduating senior and women’s basketball captain Maggie P. McCarthy ’23. In a college experience defined by waking up near dawn for lacrosse practice, heading back across the river for class, rushing to the dining hall for togo dinner, and racing back to Lavietes Pavilion for basketball practice, McCarthy’s two-sport life will soon come to an end. “I tell my friends, jokingly, they never saw me semester-time at Harvard,” she laughed. The Medfield, Mass. native was initially recruited to Harvard for basketball, a program to which she has made immense contributions and which made program history this year by making it to the Great Eight of the NCAA’s WNIT. Her high school experience was shaped by the routine of sport and schoolwork, something she wanted to continue this regimen through college athletics. McCarthy’s parents and her two older brothers are graduates of Amherst College, a Division III school, and somewhere she always thought she would attend. That was until her freshman year of high school at Medfield — where she was playing soccer, basketball, and
lacrosse — Harvard reached out to her, though she wasn’t completely sold on the Ivy League. “I just loved Amherst and thought I was going to follow in my family’s footsteps,” she recounted. But what ultimately gave Harvard the green light was her conversations with the legendary Harvard basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith. “As they kept talking to me, and I kept trying to make the right decision, ultimately, it was Kathy Delaney-Smith, who was the basketball coach at the time.” Delaney-Smith — a 40-year veteran of the Harvard basketball program — racked up 630 victories, eleven Ivy League championship victories, and six NCAA tournament appearances during her time as head coach. Though she retired last year, new head coach Carrie Moore has not disappointed in her first season at the helm. It was strong and talented powerhouses in the field of collegiate athletics — in addition to world-renowned academics and opportunities like no other — that locked in McCarthy’s decision to play at Harvard, a common sentiment shared by many Ivy League athletes. “That’s why I made the decision,” she said. “I wanted to be surrounded by great and impressive people all the time, especially the female role models like Kathy, and then Devon [Wills], the lacrosse coach now.” In the 2018-19 season, her freshman year with the Crimson, McCarthy only played on the basketball team. But after basketball season finished, something was missing: her natural routine of practice, school, eat, practice, repeat. So, McCarthy followed her gut and
28 PAGE DESIGN BY TOBY R. MA—CRIMSON DESIGNER
