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Stephanie Hsiao (Princeton '05) |
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Bio
 What has your experience been with youth athletics?
I started swimming in a summer recreational league basically because I am from Southern California and my mom said that I needed to learn how to swim. I started that when I was seven. I started receiving lessons when I was like five and started swimming competitively on a year-long club team when I was 10. Then I progressed on from that and joined a senior group, which was based off natural progression.
Did you engage in any other sports when you were younger?
I played soccer and I was totally uncoordinated. I found my niche in swimming and I just kept doing that and it was fun. I think originally my parents wanted me to swim for water safety and then during the winter I continued to swim to build up my immune system and then it just became something that I was just so use to it and you kind of build your life around it. Your in the pool two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, my whole social life was around going to the pool and all of my friends were at the pool.
Was there an organized sports organization in Southern California or did you decide to pursue this on your own?
I think the rec. league was definitely my mom and that was just in my neighborhood and that was just something you did during the summer. When I joined the club team I think that was more me. I wanted to swim more competitively. It was more that I wanted to break all of the records on my rec. team and then I just got into it as a formal sport.
Did you train with females only or was it coed?
It was coed, but we had a good group of girls around my age group, boys made up the majority of the group and we were coached by a male and then I came here and we are coached by Susan Teeter.
Do you have any preference for a coach, male or female?
I don’t think I have a preference because they are so different. When you're growing up as an adolescent you kind of know with girls, you're kind of used to having someone tell you what to do, so the male coach was like this is what your going to do, this is how your going to train. Here, Teeter was a lot more about I want you to swim for you and I don’t you to swim to please me, I want you to improve because you want to improve. She taught me a lot about why I trained and goal setting and motivation and how to apply those concepts learned in the pool to my everyday life outside the pool.
Was it your goal to go to an Ivy League school?
I kind of new coming from the west coast that I did want to go to an Ivy League school so I looked more seriously at Brown, Princeton, Harvard, Yale. I did look at Cal and Stanford, UC-Berkley, California schools, but then I kind of knew that I wanted to get away from home. I kind of liked how the academics were more emphasized here. Across the board, the Ivy League schools, the academics were all relatively even and I just wanted to find an even balance of athletics and academics. Usually coming from the west coast, with a ton of Pac-10 schools, athletics is definitely emphasized. A lot of the coaches that were non-Ivy League were like don’t expect to get any faster swimming-wise, don’t expect to improve. Because there was one Ivy coach who was like everyone is going to tell you this, that and don’t expect to get any faster in the Ivy League and that is absolutely not true. I think because it is not a scholarship situation everyone that is on a sport wants to be here and I think it is so much greater than someone who is just doing this because it is more or less a job.
Was the perception accurate?
Take this from personal experience I have only gotten faster from freshman year to now, my senior year.
How has the national climate concerning women’s athletics changed since you were in school?
I think I take it for granted, I really think I do, because for me it seemed so natural like oh yeah there is always women surrounded by women athletes and it seems so prevalent and I can’t even imagine that like what like twenty, thirty years ago there weren’t even any women at the school. So I think I have a very warped sense. I think there is definitely progress, but there is still so much when you think of the big picture and you compare it to where the men stand, there is still so much more that can be improved on. I feel here at Princeton, it’s a parody, it’s relatively equal but there is just little things that just get up on the surface that men kind of have the advantage or privilege over. I don’t want to say that, I mean certainly there is much more focus on the men’s sports because people just go to see them. I think that women’s sports definitely lack that audience. People will go watch a women’s basketball game or women’s volleyball game, but then if you go and see the attendance, it is so much smaller then the men’s sports and I don’t know why that is. I’ve talked to male friends of mine and there like, “men’s sports are so much more exciting then women’s sports are,” and I feel just a lot of the perception is like these sports, girls sports, were given just because of Title IX and the girls sports are only there to balance the men’s sports.
Do you think the training for female youth is much different now than before?
Oh I definitely think there are more opportunities for them. I mean for me personally I never felt that there was anything that I wasn’t able to do because I was a girl. The opportunities were always there and I guess in the fore steps I mean sports are definitely becoming more individualized and I don’t think there is such a contract of a women’s team versus a men’s team. I think coaches are paying more attention and a girl could be performing really well and a guy could be performing really well, it doesn’t matter it is just a different training.
Do you think young girls should have a focus on one sport in particular or should they be well rounded?
I think when your really young like elementary school I think it is really important to have the option to want to do everything playing soccer, softball, basketball, whatever you can do. As you get older I think that it is necessary if you want to excel in a particular sport or if you happen to be better in one area to focus on that. My experience is way different because swimming and the time commitment is so huge. There are definitely girls here who are on the soccer team in the fall and the lacrosse team in the spring, but I think if they go to college and that option is there then they should definitely take advantage of it.
What advice do you have for the youth?
Just stick with something that you love, you know you have to be passionate about your sport. I mean anyone can tell you, come to this school and we will pay you and that should not be something that is motivation. It should be something that you want to do and you should be motivated yourself to improve and there shouldn’t be anything outside anything other than that.
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