“It’s 100 percent time management and discipline,” Thomas said. “When you know that you have to be at practice all afternoon, you structure your day accordingly. In a way, it almost makes it easier to do school at Harvard, because you have that structure that other people who aren’t athletes don’t have. You can’t do the same things your friends do, whenever they feel like it. You have to prioritize.”

As a student taking some of the hardest courses offered at the university, Thomas insists that surrounding oneself with like-minded people is a key to both academic success and success in general.

In athletics, her coach, Kebba Tolbert, filled that roll.

“Coach Tolbert is just one of a kind,” Thomas said. “He changed the mindset of the sport completely for me. He showed me how to love the process of competition, how to be competitive, and I definitely wouldn’t be where I am right now without him.”

In academics, the sprinter’s friends are those like-minded people.

“Academics was more of a struggle here for me at first,” Thomas said. “I’m a neurobio concentrator—all my friends are pre-med and seeing them work really hard really motivates me. I live with people who are really on top of their stuff. It’s important to surround yourself to people who hold you accountable.”

Of the four athletes who represented the Crimson at the NCAA Indoor Championships last spring, just two remain on the Harvard women’s track and field roster. Thomas, entering her third year, and sophomore distance runner Zoe Hughes will be hoping to return to the biggest stage in collegiate track and field this upcoming March. Thrower Nikki Okwelogu graduated and sophomore pentathlete Judy Pendergast transferred to Oregon just before the start of the school year.

The road back to the top begins this coming Saturday.

In a trip across the Charles River, Thomas and her teammates will compete on Dec. 2 at Boston University before taking a month off and resuming in January. The rest of the schedule spans 14 more events during January, February, and March.

The 2018 NCAA Indoor Championships will be held Mar. 9-10, 2018, on the campus of Texas A&M University, in College Station, TX.