The team was victorious in its coach’s honor, winning 14 of 20 events. Yet Turner’s passing remained on Brady’s mind.

“It made me reevaluate, made me think,” Brady says. “My freshman year was a little bit crazy, [and I thought], if I’m going to spend the next three years of my life here, what do I really want to be doing? At the end of the day, it came down to the fact that I really wanted to be involved in the track program.”

Despite his love for both sports, the exhaustion of his routine and the hit that his grades were taking made the hassle not worth it.

He knew he had to quit football.

Though today he has no regrets about that decision, there’s always that slight feeling of nostalgia every time he walks past Harvard Stadium.

“I miss it,” he admits. “Games were so much fun. I miss hitting people and getting hit. I still watch tons of football, eat it up. I love the sport.”

Yet his love for track and field soared to even greater heights as it presented new challenges.

Though he had focused on the shotput and the disc throw in high school, he had only competed in the weight throw during his first year at Harvard—a decision Brady wasn’t happy about.

“I hated it,” he says. “I threw it like 12 meters, which is not good. I was embarrased.”

His sophomore year, his new coach, Catherine Grace Erickson—who coached an NCAA-record holder in the weight throw—encouraged him to keep working at the event.

Erickson’s experience immediately appealed to Brady.

“I think it was a little difficult for him, when he started out, to really understand what impact he could have competing in the weight three years down the line, because he didn’t have much experience with it,” Erickson says. “It’s not something as easy as picking up a football and just throwing it; it’s a very unnatural event.”

By his junior year, Brady was finally buying into her advice.

“I kept telling him to trust the process, stay calm, and try to pick up one thing every day,” she says. “[I told him] by the end, you’re going to be in good shape...[and] that the weight and hammer would help his athleticism in the other events, because there’s a lot of crossover.”

The weight and hammer throws are now his favorite events—the major difference being that the hammer is thrown outdoors, the weight indoors.