The dedication that Taryn Grider, the Varsity Blues women’s lacrosse team captain, posseses is on a whole other level. The 12th-year University of Toronto student is currently in the process of finishing her PhD at the Institute of Medical Science, but that hasn’t stopped her from doing what she loves: playing sports.
“I think right now I play on seven intramural teams,” Grieder says. “I just love sports so much, and at U of T, it’s the best environment for both intramural and varsity; it’s amazing.”
Grieder started on the Scarborough campus where she studied biology and neuroscience. After playing on the intramural lacrosse team, she was recruited by the Blues coach, and her love affair with the sport began.
“Once I started playing lacrosse, I just loved it. It’s the best sport, it really is,” Grieder explains. “A lot of people haven’t had any experience with it because it’s sort of a lesser-played sport.
“There is something about it that I just loved so much, because you’re running but you’ve also got hand-eye coordination going, and it’s sort of like hockey and soccer combined.”
Grieder’s participation in athletics, in addition to her PhD work, could be overwhelming, but she finds a way to balance her hefty sports schedule and her research.
“I do feel like [sports] is my other job, like it’s my part-time job playing sports,” Grieder admits. “But I love it, the reason I stayed at Scarborough for a fifth year was just to play intramural sports.
“Lacrosse is only two months, and it is every day for two months, but it goes by so fast … and the lacrosse season is at the very beginning of the year — September and October. I don’t have courses anymore because I’m doing my PhD, so it’s all lab work. I make my own schedule really, but even for new players it’s at a time where they don’t have too much work to do.”
Last season, the 2009 OUA All-Star was nominated to be a co-captain of the lacrosse team by her teammates. This year she was officially named captain of the team by the coaching staff.
“Taryn sets the example for her teammates with her outstanding play on the field. She is intelligent, highly motivated, confident, and a very competitive athlete,” women’s lacrosse head coach Todd Pepper comments.
Grieder counts being called upon by her teammates to take on the role of co-captain as one of her greatest moments with the team.
“The players all came together and said that they wanted me as captain,” she explains. “That was really awesome in the sense that they did that for me and they wanted [to name me captain]. So it was a huge honour for that to happen.”
Grieder takes her role as captain seriously on and off the field. Instead of focusing only on helping the team with the sport itself and the skills involved, she makes sure that she helps the younger members by acting as a role model for them.
“In terms of being a captain, for me, what it meant was being a leader for the new players, setting an example in terms of playing and skills, but also how to succeed in school and how to treat other players and be helpful and [give] constructive criticism,” Grieder says.
“I just to try and be a good role model for the younger players. I’m in [my] 12th year, I’m 29-years-old, and some of the kids on the team are 17 coming in, so for me it was more than being an athletic leader — it was more like being a role model for the other players.”
“Taryn is a person that the younger players on the team can look up to. She really cares about her teammates,” Pepper says of his captain.
Grieder plans on getting her PhD in a few months and will continue to do research in her field, but U of T and the lacrosse team will always have a place in her heart.
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about how I can stay at school even longer. I was even thinking of doing a Master of Education, which I can do in one year. I will be devastated because not only do I play on the varsity team but all those intramural sports that I play — I won’t be able to play them anymore. It’ll be so sad; I don’t want to leave at all.”
Grieder will continue to play lacrosse even after she leaves U of T; she plays on the Toronto Titans team in the summer.
As for her future plans, Grieder reveals, “I’ve got a job in San Diego, a post-doctoral fellowship position lined up to do similar research to what I do now, and then I want to come back to U of T and be a professor and hopefully coach lacrosse.”
Grieder knows what she’ll be taking with her when she leaves Toronto. “It’s been the best part of my university experience, playing sports at U of T.”
