A Mentor and a Future Doctor
By Kevin Ivany
HurricaneSports.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – She arrived at Miami with expectations to have a future in what she loved most, playing soccer. Then Hannah Marwede was blindsided with news from doctors during her sophomore campaign.
After a freshman season cut short by mononucleosis, Marwede began working towards a return to the pitch before a pain started to become too much to bear.
Occasionally dealing with numbness in her legs and at one point losing complete feeling in her lower extremities, the senior realized it was time to visit a specialist.
It was then that she learned she had two fractures in her spine.
And after meeting with multiple surgeons, she was informed that surgery would be too dangerous.
“One of the surgeons said, ‘If you were my kid, I would tell you to stop playing Division I soccer, and over time it should begin to heal on its own, without the operation,'” Marwede said. “It was honestly one of the hardest things to hear and I knew I had to decide whether or not to give up the thing I loved the most.
“But, currently, I am in no pain and I am able to get in little jogs,” Marwede continued. “It was a tough decision, but it has been cool being able to focus on science. [Miami head] coach [Sarah Barnes] has been really amazing about letting me go to research and focus on my future which is now in medicine, not in soccer, like I expected. She has been great about that whole transition and also allowing me to be with the team. It had been an awful period of time, but I made the most of it and some amazing doors have since opened up.”
Pursuing a degree in biochemistry, with minors in chemistry and psychology, the Lake Forest, Ill., native is currently working on her thesis project over at the Miller School of Medicine and has taken some of the time she would have been spending on the pitch to work towards her ultimate goals.
She spends upwards of eight hours a day on the medical campus, where she has been doing research to try and put a stop to aptoptosis, a form of cell death in the hearing organ of the inner ear, cochlea.
Now that she has learned she has been accepted into her dream medical school in Chicago, the senior is beginning to decide on her future after Miami.
“I want to be a doctor, in particular one that works with my patients,” Marwede said. “I want to be a specialist in a specific area. Which at the moment, I am thinking the ear because that is what I have been working so hard on, but also, maybe cancer. I also want to be able to do research and be able to continue to progress medicine so I can apply what I am learning in the lab to give my patients the most recent treatments.”
In regards to soccer, Marwede knew she could no longer help on the pitch, so she began to think about how she could contribute in other ways.
“I believe where we are right now, every single one of us, is for a reason. So, I was like, ‘Okay, what is my purpose here as someone who will never play, what can I be doing,'” Marwede said. “So, that is when I sat down with coach [Barnes] and we decided a freshmen mentality program could be a really great idea, since I had gone through so much.”
Said Barnes, “Despite not being able to play any longer, she’s still around and participating. She’s leading the mentor program with our freshman class and just trying to contribute any way she can to help make a difference. I think she is the kind of kid who looks at every opportunity as a way to make the place better than she found it, so we’ll always be appreciative of the time and commitment that she put into the program.”
All season, Marwede met weekly with all nine freshmen on the roster. She opened up about what she went through during the early portion of her career and took time to listen to each of her teammates stories.
“It started off as a brand new idea and it ended up super great. Rewarding for me and I hope rewarding for them,” Marwede said. “The best conversations, I thought, were when it became a heart-to-heart about life and everyone could hear about their teammate’s struggles and know that we are all in it together. We also would talk about needing to have an ACC mentality and how it all starts in practice with how we compete against one another.”
The impact she had on the program and the way Marwede conducted herself over the past couple seasons has really stood out to the second-year Miami head coach.
“She’s just an unbelievably positive, high energy, intelligent, super caring and empathetic person, so obviously it was a huge loss for us that she was medically disqualified and unable to participate,” Barnes said. “But, I think it tells you a lot about the kind of person she is and how much she cares about the team and this program.
“She is going to go into the world and be a doctor at some point and she will be the kind of doctor that I think anyone would want because she is smart and she will know what she’s talking about,” Barnes continued.” And, more importantly, she will care and want to do the best for you, that’s just the kind of person she is.”
As the Canes enter their final regular season match against third-ranked North Carolina Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Marwede hopes she has left an impact on the underclassmen.
“I hope they know that I am their biggest cheerleader, I am their biggest fan,” Marwede said. “I am available to them whenever they need. I also hope that they see the family oriented group we have and how we have sisters here for the rest of our lives. I hope they know there worth as humans and as soccer players and that life is tough but also super rewarding. And my biggest goal is that they can look back in four years, like I am now, and see a difference in the program. That would be the ultimate goal.”
And as the curtain closes on the collegiate playing careers for the Class of 2020, Marwede couldn’t be prouder of the women her four classmates – Dejah Cason, Bayleigh Chaviers, Kristina Fisher and Lauren Markwith – have become.
“Well the senior class, going through all of this with them for four years, we have all gotten super close and we have all seen each other go through some difficult things,” Marwede said. “I am so proud of every single one of them and just the strong women that they are. They each are so confident and are going to do such great things.”
