Trading in Cardinal for Crimson

Evidently, a Harvard education is more important than a national title.

Women's swimming team captain Corie Calfee wanted to transfer to Harvard so badly that she gave up her spot on the national championship Stanford Cardinal to come to school in Cambridge.

But since her arrival to Harvard, Calfee has been a strong force on the Crimson team. This year she will try to lead Harvard to the Ivy League Championship.

And after beating last year's Ivy champion Brown on Friday for the first time in four years, Harvard is well on its way to achieving its goal.

However, her quest to lead the team will not be easy. Just last week, Calfee was diagnosed with pneumonia, and so, for the next few weeks, she must assume a new role on the team, while she stays outside of the pool and gets healthy.

Although Calfee has settled in nicely at Harvard, the path to Cambridge was not an easy one. A native of Davis, Calif., she chose Stanford over Harvard during her senior year of high school in 1995 because she couldn't pass up a chance to swim for the national powerhouse Cardinal, which had won the NCAA championship the previous three years.

"I came to the conclusion that Harvard and Stanford were pretty comparable in all things," Calfee said. "But the Stanford swimming program was an opportunity I couldn't pass up."

"I knew that if I didn't swim at Stanford, I would always look back and wonder how fast I could have been if I had," she added.

And so Calfee went to Palo Alto as a freshman to swim for the Cardinal. And with her contributing as a freshman, Stanford went on to win the NCAA championship for the fourth consecutive season.

But, over the next summer, after the excitement of the national championship had subsided, Calfee realized that something was missing from her college life.

"Swimming had become my entire existence," Calfee said. "I realized that maybe I needed to reconsider my decision and look into other options."

She went back to Stanford for her the fall semester of her sophomore year, but she didn't swim and instead tried to immerse herself in other extracurricular activities to fill up her extra time. It didn't work, however. Calfee simply missed swimming too much.

"I still wanted to be swimming," Calfee said. "I just had to find a place where I could balance it with the rest of life."

And so, Calfee applied to Harvard as a transfer student and started talking about swimming for the Crimson. She enrolled the following fall of 1997.

Now an established swimmer for the Crimson, Calfee is relieved that she got a second chance to attend Harvard.

"I love it here," Calfee said. "I love how people are so enthusiastic about their academic and extracurricular activities."

Calfee competes in the 100-meter breaststroke, 200-meter individual medley and the 100-meter butterfly for Harvard.

She is looking forward to a competitive season this year and thinks that her team's strength is its depth of talent.

"It is pretty unusual," Calfee said. "Most teams have one of two stars, but we have 43 fantastic athletes."

And after beating Brown on Friday in a dual meet, she is even more excited.

"The league title that we've been eyeing for so long is definitely within shooting distance," Calfee said.

But Calfee will have to cheer her teammates on for at least a few more weeks, as she recovers from pneumonia. Considering all she has gone through to get to this point, Calfee shouldn't have a problem overcoming this latest obstacle.