Brunswick alum Felicia Pasadyn plans to graduate early from Harvard, get master's and swim at Ohio State

Regardless of pool, classroom or extracurricular activity, Brunswick native Felicia Pasadyn always is moving with incredible speed and efficiency. Pasadyn is in the middle of her second season competing for the Harvard swimming and diving team, but it also will be her last at the school after deciding to complete her undergraduate degree in only three years. She then will transfer to and swim for Ohio State. The Ivy League made the decision last year to cancel all sports seasons amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, wiping out Pasadyn's sophomore season. Pasadyn stayed busy by maintaining a 4.0 GPA with a heavy course load of virtual classes after Harvard went strictly online for the 2020-21 school year. "Last fall and spring semesters my academic load was very challenging, and that was my focus for the last year while swimming was on the back burner," Pasadyn said. "I was doing maintenance of swimming and supplementing that with running and other forms of exercise when I couldn't get pool hours given the situation with the pandemic." Pasadyn made the decision to graduate early independent of the Ivy League canceling the season, instead focusing on medical school and financial considerations. Next season, Pasadyn plans to return closer to home and take part in a one-year Bioethics Master's program while competing at Ohio State. After that, she'll turn in her swim cap and goggles for a stethoscope and white lab coat to pursue medical school. She doesn't know where she wants to focus her medical practice, but Pasadyn enjoys internal medicine and is interested in neurology, pulmonology and cardiology. "Becoming a physician has been a dream of mine since late middle school or early high school," Pasadyn said. "I've always been intrigued by helping people and solving puzzles revolving around human anatomy, the body and medicine." In addition to her course load, Pasadyn also commits a significant amount of time as a student leader in Harvard's Christian Impact and Athletes in Action organizations, which does community service work around Boston, and as a chemistry and biology tutor to three or four students each semester. Pasadyn also is active in Student Athlete Advisory Committee, a student government for athletes at Harvard and across the Ivy League, volunteers at a homeless shelter and helps with Project Swim, an organization that teaches disabled children how to swim. "Those take up a lot of my time, but in a good way," Pasadyn said. "It shows me my priorities, and I definitely love those organizations." Due in part to her hectic classwork schedule, Pasadyn, who specializes in the freestyle, backstroke and individual medley, saw her training become more sporadic last fall and spring, but she ramped up again this summer to be ready for the season. "I specifically set my eyes on being ready for my team for my senior year," Pasadyn said. "I wanted to come back and be ready as ever for my team. It's been such a treasure to be back here as a senior for the fall semester." Harvard is off to a strong start with a 4-0 record, including 3-0 against Ivy League competition. The team kicked off December with a strong showing at the Minnesota Invitational before taking the rest of the month off. In Minnesota, Pasadyn broke the NCAA B-cut threshold for qualifying for the NCAA tournament in the 200-yard butterfly (personal-best 1:56.49), as well as the 200 backstroke (1:54.97) and 400 individual medley (4:13.82 in the preliminaries, 4:14.61 in the finals). The B-cut times will fill in events at the NCAA Championships if the A-cut threshold is not filled by March. Pasadyn also led the 400 freestyle relay to its fastest time of the season (3:19.40) and the 800 freestyle relay (7:15.97) in its first competition. "I honestly went into the (Minnesota Invitational) not knowing what to expect, because this is probably the longest break I've ever taken from swimming in the last year and a half," Pasadyn said. "I was extremely happy with the performances that the team put up. The midseason invitational was a good marker of where we are and where we're headed looking into February." Pasadyn has a couple of significant goals, starting with an Ivy League championship in February. Harvard, which finished second in 2020, will battle defending champion Princeton, as well as Yale and Penn when the Crimson hosts the championship. Pasadyn also hopes to return to the NCAA Championships, where she qualified for six events as a freshman. "I think it would such a phenomenal experience to be able to graduate on a high leading my team to victory at the Ivy League championship in my senior year," Pasadyn said. "I qualified for six events my freshman year for the national championship and I think to go full circle would be really cool. I'd love to qualify as an individual in an event and in a relay so that a group of girls could represent Harvard on the national level." Contact John Urchek at sports@medina-gazette.com.