Kate Martin

To see the frustration on Kate Martin's face after the Harvard women's lacrosse squad dropped a heartbreaking 7-6 loss in this year's NCAA quarterfinals was to see the culmination of four of the hardest, yet happiest, years of her athletic life.

And for the Crimson's three-sport standout, the pain didn't seem fair.

After all, this was the Harvard star who had given possibly more of herself than any other Crimson athlete. In the 12 athletic seasons Martin spent in Cambridge, she spent 10 of them on the Crimson playing fields. And after enduring seemingly endless losing seasons in field hockey and basketball, the success of the lacrosse squad was a deserving and pleasant change. So the frustrating loss in her final collegiate game hurt.

"Winning in lacrosse was a pleasant change," says Martin, who took to the lacrosse fields for the first time ever in her junior year. "That last loss was pretty disappointing."

But to the Woburn, Mass, native, the tough seasons of field hockey and basketball were made easier by the camaraderie Martin found with her teammates. "The greatest part of the whole experience--whether winning or losing--has been the people I've met," she says. "They've made it all worth it."

Martin made her debut on Soldiers Field with an inept field hockey squad. Four years later, though, the squad had become one of the nation's best--thanks largely to Captain Kate Martin. The Crimson finished this year with an 11-2-3 record, its first-ever national ranking (19) and Martin as its scoring leader.

And thanks to her herculean efforts, Martin garnered All-American honors, the first Harvard stickwomen ever to do so. "Kate was always there for us," Harvard Coach Edie Mabrey says of the four-time All-Ivy selection and current U.S. field hockey squad member. "No one deserved the honor more."

As fall turned to winter, Martin quickly moved to basketball. As captain this year, the four-year starter Boston banker-to-be saw the squad finish 7-17.

The past two years, however, Martin moved from the indoor basketball confines to the green grass of lacrosse. "Carole [Kleinfelder] had asked me to come out a few times," Martin says of her former basketball coach and current lacrosse coach. "It seemed like a fast game and a lot of fun."

In the two years she was a member of the Crimson lacrosse squad, Martin anchored a steady defense that became one of the nation's finest. And don't let her tell you--as she so modestly will--that it was others who were chiefly responsible. Coaches and players say that her efforts were a key reason both the field hockey and lacrosse programs reached national prominence.

Jennifer White

If Kate Martin isn't the finest all-around athlete graduating today, her roommate Jennifer White might be. While Martin took the spotlight for 10 of her 12 athletic seasons here. White did her one better, skipping only the winter season of her freshman year.

But unlike Martin, White made ice hockey her winter home. And when she stepped on the ice and began playing the game for the first time ever in her sophomore year, the Brookline, Mass, native used her field hockey and lacrosse skills to quickly become one of the Crimson's most talented icewomen.

While White never achieved the wide honors that accompany most three-sport athletes, she attained notoriety as possibly the finest all-around athlete Harvard has ever seen. Rarely has one person been such an instrumental part of three championship teams.

In her four years here, White became the backbone of a field hockey squad, an ice hockey squad and a lacrosse squad that each became a top-notch team. To realize how many goals--and for that matter, how many points--White has accumulated as a four-year starter on both the field hockey and lacrosse squads and as a three-year starter on the ice hockey team is almost shattering.

"Jennifer even scored from the left wing position," Field Hockey Coach Edie Mabrey says. "And that's the hardest position on the field to score from."

Her uncontested domination on the playing fields finally gained her some long overdue respect this year, when she was named to the All-Ivy lacrosse team.

The four-year fairytale is over, and while many Harvard opponents take pleasure in that fact, as Mabrey says, "Harvard may never be the same again."