"You're going to have to excuse me," she begins, laughing. "I'm kinda spaced out today."
Wait. Could this really be Liz Berkery, All-American lacrosse player and Co-Captain of the Harvard women's lacrosse team this season?
Liz Berkery, who has scored six goals in a game--on more than one occasion?
Liz Berkery, who often plays with a deadly scowl on her face? Could this laughing, funny person really be her?
"Yeah, I'm pretty aggressive and intense [on the field]," the Eliot senior admits. "I hate to lose."
Obviously. In Berkery's three years at Harvard, the women's lacrosse team has yet to lose an Ivy League contest. It barely loses at all, actually.
Of course, that's not all due to Berkery. In a program as strong as Harvard's, numerous stars come and go in every class. But you still get the feeling that this one player, this giggling but intense player, is special.
As a freshman, she played on Harvard's most recent national championship squad. She names the NCAA title game against Maryland in 1990 as her favorite lacrosse memory.
"The second half of that game was so fun," she says. "I had a great time."
The good times didn't stop there. In her sophomore year, Berkery earned second team All-American honors, and last season she moved onto the first team.
First team All-America. NCAA All-Tournament team. Ivy League scoring championship. One goal away from a second national title. All that in her junior year.
"She's quite an athlete," Coach Carole Kleinfelder says. "She always has a good sense of where the net is, and she's good enough that if other teams don't pay attention to her, she's bound to score.
"Off the field, though, I think there's a side of Liz that a lot of people don't see," Kleinfelder continues.
Indeed, it is difficult at first to separate Berkery the Student from Berkery the Player. The student side seems obscured by all the national honors.
No Big Deal
Then you talk to Berkery herself, and you wonder what the big deal was.
An American History concentrator, Berkery says that sports have been an important part of her life at Harvard, but not all of it.
"[Playing lacrosse] hasn't really been that different from doing any other activity, I think, except that I focus on it a lot, just like [someone else] might focus on the Crimson or something."
Asked what she'd like to do after graduation, she laughs again and says, "I'm looking in a lot of different directions. Maybe marketing, or teaching, or even business."
For now, though, she remains Liz Berkery, lacrosse star. She is expected to carry much of the Crimson's scoring load this season, and she will provide leadership to a team intent on reclaiming old glory.
Characteristically, Berkery seems excited.
"We have a very hard-working team this year with lots of potential," she says. "There's a good combination of experience and youth. Our ultimate goal is definitely to get back to the NCAA finals."
Can all these expectations, all these accolades, really fall on one person's shoulders?
Kleinfelder hopes they don't have to. "I don't want the other players to become dependent on her. Obviously, she's one of our main players, and she will do what she can. But we can't expect her to do everything."
If the Crimson is in a really, really tight bind, though--like, say, in the NCAA finals--it'll be okay to depend on her, right? Just a tiny bit?
Of course. It's Liz Berkery we're talking about here, remember?
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