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My dad tells me that sports bring a community together — that today more than ever two people living in the same town, state, or region might only have sports to connect them. Sports do not care about your race or creed. They can give you a banner to raise.

How could writing about a game be important if it’s not the real world? When I started writing for The Crimson, I wasn’t thinking about community. I wanted something to do while Harvard duked it out on the field, court, and ice.

But when senior Sophia Montgomery became the first of several current Harvard College students to be nominated for the 2024 Paris Olympics, I jumped at the chance to write about her nomination. I was awed that one of our classmates would be at the highest athletic stage in the world. The nominations kept dropping, and our complete Olympic squad featured over 25 athletes participating in a plethora of different events.

When our Harvardians get to the pinnacle of their respective field, it’s important that we all know about it. Our celebrations of each other’s achievements turn a school into a community. Montgomery –– and all of the 2024 Olympians –– take a little part of Harvard –– a little part of all of us –– to Paris with them.

After writing about the Olympic nominations, I wrote about the 50th anniversary of Harvard and Radcliffe College merging their athletic departments. The Director of Athletics at the time, Robert Blake Watson, was firmly against the merger, because he saw women’s teams as less serious or competitive.

“Are we justified in dismantling established men’s programs that have operated in a competitive atmosphere in order to accord equal treatment to programs which are not really equal in either intensity or dedication?” Watson wrote in a memo at the time.

It took a change in the law, and the pressure of female athletes and athletic administrators like Mary Paget, who was the director of sports at Radcliffe, to force the Director to relent. Social issues play out in Athletics as they do in communities more broadly.

Writing about sports, telling the stories of our modern day gladiators, is essential. Athletes push humanity’s physical and emotional boundaries every day, giving their all to become champions of the world. Athletes can become champions for equality, but only if we give them an audience. When we tell the stories of athletes fighting with all their might for the name on the front of their jersey, we enable athletes to bring out the best in ourselves.

As we push forward and fight for what is right, I am sure we will see athletes on the frontlines. Every match is an opportunity for sportsmanship to prevail, and every off-court appearance is an opportunity to lift someone with their actions.

When I look back on my three and a half years as part of The Crimson, I won’t remember the headlines and the medals. They’ll be secondary to the communities I helped fuel.

—Staff writer Thomas Harris can be reached at thomas.harris@thecrimson.com.