For some athletes, it is been a lifelong dream. For others, it is an opportunity to explore the world. But for all student-athletes who try to go pro, breaking into the professional ranks is a chance to prove themselves on the next level and receive financial compensation for doing so.

Professional sports is not a field most people associate with a Harvard education, but for a select few Crimson student-athletes, four years of intercollegiate competition is not enough. From shooting hoops in Europe to calling plays in the NFL, several Harvard graduates are making waves on professional playing fields around the world.

“People just don’t expect Harvard students to be quality athletes,” said Rachel Brown ’12, who won a national softball championship in Sweden this past year after leading the Crimson to two Ivy League titles. “Anytime somebody [coming from Harvard] is successful with an athletic career, it’s kind of a big deal.”

UNEQUAL OPPORTUNITY

While graduating athletes with professional aspirations have the same immediate goal of signing a contract, a sports career is a means to a variety of ends.

Former basketball co-captain Miriam Rutzen will play in Europe over the summer and hopes to continue doing so in the fall.  For the senior, an overseas job is just another phase of her life, not a permanent career.

“[I want to] use basketball to move on and explore the world where I’m learning about a new culture, a different people, a different language,” Rutzen said. “A Harvard education often times pushes you to kick away your beliefs and kick away what you think and how you are [as a person].... My goal isn’t to play professionally. It’s to use that to take me to the next step [in my life].”

Brown,  the winningest pitcher in Harvard history and now the assistant softball coach at Stony Brook, believes the disparity in attention garnered by men’s and women’s professional teams means a career in sports is not necessarily the endgame for the bulk of female student-athletes.

“It was more just a temporary life experience to go play softball in Sweden,” Brown said. “For women, it’s not as possible for athletics to be a professional career as it is for men, especially with softball and baseball.”

FOLLOWING THEIR FOOTSTEPS

The difference in opportunities—and with them, challenges—yields different goals for male student-athletes from Harvard looking to enter the highest level of competition.

This April, the Baltimore Ravens selected senior Kyle Juszczyk in the fourth round of the NFL draft. Juszczyk, who utilized his versatility as an H-back in the Crimson’s offense, was Harvard’s first NFL draft pick since quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05.

Fitzpatrick’s nine-year career exemplifies the possibility of post-Crimson success. After a college career that included an Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year award in 2004, nearly 7,000 total offensive yards, and an almost-perfect Wonderlic test, the quarterback was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in 2005.

“It was a dream, something I had always wanted to do since I had been growing up, but I didn’t think it was ever going to be any sort of reality,” Fitzpatrick said. “I talked to [Harvard] coach [Tim] Murphy...and apparently I had shown up on the radar of some NFL teams. It wasn’t until after my junior year and heading into my senior year that I had any idea that it was a possibility for me.”

Fitzpatrick—who chose Harvard after unsuccessfully pursuing a Football Bowl Subdivision scholarship—says his time in Cambridge colored his worldview and informed him of the variety of people and cultures lying ahead in his life.