Catching Up With ... Thomas D'Anieri (CMS Men's Cross Country Class of 2020)
As a follow-up to our Championship Memories Saturday feature, where current CMS student-athletes look back on the championships they have won during their collegiate athletic careers, we will be occasionally be conducting a question and answer session with recent alumni from those title teams, as they too discuss their memories, as well as how their experiences as student-athletes have helped prepare them for life after college.
This week's CMS Alumni q+a is with Thomas D'Anieri, who was one of the members of the CMS men's cross country team who won last year's SCIAC title by tiebreaker over Pomona-Pitzer (Saturday's feature story). Winning back the title meant a lot to the program, which had finished third in the SCIAC Championships in each of the last two years after winning five straight titles from 2012-16. But it also meant a lot to D'Anieri, who had a long road back from an Achilles injury that cost him his junior season, before winning the individual championship in his final SCIAC event.
Read below to catch up with Thomas D'Anieri, his memories of his CMS cross country experience, and his current professional pursuits after graduating from Claremont McKenna with over a 3.8 GPA as an philosophy, politics and economics major while earning First-Team Academic All-America honors.
CMS: How much did sweeping the individual and team SCIAC titles as a senior mean to you, especially after what you had to overcome to get back out there?
TD: It still gives me chills to think about that day. That title was the culmination of four years of dedication to running hard, but more importantly, to supporting each other. We won my freshman year and then missed out badly the next two years, but throughout that time we were showing up each day and slowly putting in the work to get better, even if we did not always see the results. For about a year of that period I was badly injured and spent many long, hard hours crushing myself in the spin room to try to get in shape, while doing whatever else I could to support my teammates. At the same time, my teammates and coaches were always encouraging me and treating me like I was out there with them everyday. So to have had the opportunity to come back and give everything that I had for my team--and to see them put forth the same kind of effort for each other--in a way that ended with such a tangible expression of success is something I will always cherish.
CMS: There was some drama in waiting for the announcement of the team championship since it was so close. What did that moment feel like when you knew you guys had won
TD: As soon as I saw Pick cross the line in 10th, I was pretty sure we had it. Henry embodied what it meant to "run like a freshman" in the good sense of the term. He did not race like he had some pre-ordained position he would finish in, or person he would pace off of, he just went out there and blew the doors off of it. It reminded me a lot of how I ran at SCIACs my freshman year. I finished in a similar position, we also won by an incredibly close margin over PP that year, and I, like Henry, was the freshman who popped off to secure the win. So what I was really thinking about when they announced the results was "well, the next generation has arrived" in the same way that I began my career.
CMS: What is your favorite memory from the postseason last year that you think you will always keep with you?
TD: My teammates signed a card for me at the banquet after the season was over. I am sure this happens in every sport for basically every senior, but their words meant the world to me. I think I had a reputation throughout my 4 years as being a very intense person, and I was also known for being one of the faster people on the team. But neither of those things in and of itself makes a difference for anyone, and deep down I always worried that my legacy was going to be just that--as a fast guy who trained really hard. Reading the words on that paper made all of those fears evaporate. They showed me that I had been able to make for my teammates the kind of impact that those who came before me had on me, and that--not someone's PRs or titles--is how I define a successful CMS career.
CMS: What are you doing now?
TD: I am a Legal Assistant at Dovel & Luner, a business litigation firm based in Santa Monica. I live with one of my fellow CMS XC grads and good friend, Wilson Ives!
CMS: How was Claremont McKenna able to prepare you for life after college?
TD: CMC is the ultimate liberal arts college in that it forces you to expand your skills and knowledge across a wide array of academic disciplines and aspects of life. If you can balance athletics, academics, eating at Collins for every meal, extra-curriculars, and finding a job, and have a great time while doing it, you can easily handle the work-life balance post college. Furthermore, as a PPE major, I was constantly forced to examine the interplay of why we solve problems (philosophy), what we do to solve them (politics), and how we make those solutions happen (economics). That kind of analysis is applicable to anything you do in life--whether it be in your work, your relationships, or your individual choices. I will take those skills with me everywhere I go.
CMS: What lessons did you learn from competing as a student-athlete that you hope to keep with you during your professional career?
TD: "You get out of it what you put into it." Lots of people take this quote to mean that if you run a hundred miles a week, or read a thousand pages a week, you will, in a linear fashion, get faster or smarter. That is not true, and that is not why I feel like this is what I have taken away from being an athlete at CMS. Rather, I take this quote to mean, "go do things." You will rarely regret putting work and time into something, whether it be attending a new club, meeting new people, going the extra mile on the spin bike even when it feels pointless at that particular soul-crushing moment, doing an extra lift after practice, asking someone how they are doing (really), or just waking up an hour earlier to start your day. While I was a student-athlete at CMS, there were a lot of little things that I did that may not have felt super meaningful at the time and perhaps were not extraordinarily efficient uses of time, but they were certainly a lot better than doing nothing. At CMS, there was no time to do nothing, and lots of opportunities to go do something. So talk to people, do a push-up, Google the thing you are curious about. You will get something out of it. Being a student-athlete at CMS created an environment that promoted this kind of attitude, and it is something I will continue to develop throughout my career and my life.