The thud of the round, rubber lacrosse ball flying back and forth between players rings out in a memory from Kyra Hawk’s (12) junior season of the sport. It was a cold night, and Harker was playing at Hillsdale High School when the lights unexpectedly cut off at 7 p.m. With the game in a precarious position, Hillsdale’s coach offered Harker the opportunity to forfeit. 

“Their coach is talking and then our coach comes back [to the huddle],” Kyra said. “She says, ‘Do you guys want to forfeit?’ We’re pretty much losing, but we’re like, no, no, we’re not going to. We can’t let them win. So we sit there huddling on the field for 20 minutes in the dark until the lights turn back on. Then, they crushed us in the second half, as expected.”

The perseverance shown by Harker on that cold spring night is nothing new for Kyra. Growing up with a family of lacrosse players, Kyra began pursuing the sport at age 6. As a ninth grader, she worked tirelessly to recruit other Harker students to play lacrosse, a mostly East Coast sport without many players at the upper school. While this initially dampened her spirits about sports at Harker, she passionately recruited and mentored new players so that the program could thrive again.

“I would come out every long lunch, and she would teach me [how to play lacrosse],” friend and teammate Katelyn Abellera (12) said. “Before practice, we would come out like half an hour early. I would ask her all these questions over and over again. She’d answer all my questions and be so nice and so patient. She gave really good tips, and she’s a really good teacher too. It made me feel more comfortable.”

While many know Kyra as a superstar lacrosse player, the sport isn’t her only athletic endeavor. As a new-to-Harker freshman, she joined the girls water polo team, forging new connections and expanding her horizons beyond lacrosse.

“I didn’t really know anybody coming into ninth grade because I was new,” Kyra said. “As a new person, the water polo team was really fun to join just because they’re such a cool group of girls. And now, we’re really close.”

Kyra’s vibrant personality drew in many of her peers, who struck up friendships with her, including underclassmen. Her friends observed how younger students from the lacrosse and water polo teams have admired her as a leader over the years.

“I think it’s just funny to see how every year she has a new underclass buddy,” Sydney Adler (12) said. “I think people can tell that she’s a genuinely nice person, and that makes her more attractive to people to jump on or to just to be around.”

While Kyra is humble about her accomplishments, she takes pride in helping build Harker’s lacrosse program to its current level of success. The rigors of academics and her demanding athletic schedule have taught Kyra how to manage her time effectively. Between water polo, school lacrosse and club lacrosse, she has always had her hands full.

“Sports helped me allocate my time,” Kyra said. “I can’t really function if I don’t exercise. It just makes me really sad if I don’t work out. I need sports to kind of be able to allocate time to do homework and have time to work out, and that’s how I structure my day. In the end, it’s all worth it.”

Upper school math teacher Caren Furtado commended Kyra’s leadership abilities, both on the field and in the classroom. She recounted a story of Kyra’s initial struggles in her precalculus class, in which she rose to the challenge, becoming a top student in the class and leaving a lasting impression on her teacher.

“[Kyra] is truly a master of her own destiny in so many ways,” Furtado said. “She’s just confident, she’s strong, she’s opinionated, she’s not afraid to make her opinions known. She’s not afraid to work hard. She’s not afraid to take chances. She will go wherever she wants to go. She really is always going to be in the driver’s seat of her life.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Harker, Kyra found herself out of the driver’s seat temporarily, with no sports games to play and no school to attend. Without sports, Kyra struggled to fill time and organize her life. However, her newfound free time led to a budding interest in fashion, particularly thrifting for unique, inexpensive clothes that she could style. Now, every day, she comes to class in a new, bright outfit — for instance, a green Harker Water Polo shirt with blue suspenders. She takes pride in being able to find the most eccentric clothing and style it into an outfit. 

“I express myself through fashion,” Kyra said. “I like dressing weird, but that’s because I broke my wrist freshman year and I couldn’t button jeans or tie my shoes or put my hair up because I broke my radius all the way through. I was annoyed by that. Then, quarantine hit and I started thrifting a lot. I always found it to be really cool to find the ugliest, weirdest clothes and make it work.”

Her individual style, coupled with her leadership, shaped Kyra into someone who is recognized by faculty and students alike as a force in the community, with a bright future ahead of her. Kyra regards her mother as an ideal example of what she wants her future to look like.

“I find my mom inspiring just because she does what she wants to do,” Kyra said. “I find it really inspiring that she’s able to jump and do what she likes. She was a lawyer, and when that wasn’t fun, she became a teacher. When I graduate, she wants to go into film. I always find doing new things really scary. I want to be able to go through my life, do what I love, try new things and be able to feel satisfied at the end of my life.”