Today’s senior night festivities for the Harvard water polo team will be especially emotional for one junior in particular.
“I’m starting to tear up now,” junior Shayna Price said over the phone on Tuesday. “Definitely very nervous and scared about what’s going to happen. (Aisha) has definitely been there for me my entire life.”
For three years, Aisha and Shayna Price have dominated the Harvard pool in Cambridge, Mass., where the sisters have combined to score 283 goals for the women’s water polo team.
Today marks the final home game they will play together when the Crimson host Brown in a rivalry game between the two Ivy League schools.
Aisha Price, who is a year older than Shayna, will participate in her second senior night ceremony of the school year.
The two-sport star finished her soccer career in the fall, and that experience has allowed her to savor every moment of this year’s water polo season.
“I’ve thought about my last day of water polo every single day this year,” Aisha Price said. “When I finished soccer, I saw all of my teammates who were also seniors become retired athletes and it’s allowed me to cherish my last season of water polo a lot more.
“Shayna and I have been playing together since we were babies, and this being my last games with my sister is a really emotional thought.”
The two won back-to-back water polo state titles at Punahou before Aisha graduated and enrolled at Harvard.
Shayna won a third state championship her senior year at Punahou and was fortunate enough to get accepted to the same school as her sister.
“It wasn’t so much of a pressure to get in to Harvard, but it was definitely in the back of my mind my senior year,” Shayna Price said. “People would always ask me if I was going to Harvard, but for me, I was either going to get accepted or go somewhere else out on my own.”
Both called it a “blessing” to play together at Harvard, where they both agree they’ve become a lot closer.
They live in the same dormitory, albeit in different rooms, and have taken as many as three classes together in a semester.
This semester, they are “only” in two of the same classes.
“I think part of the reason we’re up here, it’s nice to have family,” Shayna said.
“We definitely have become a lot closer up here because our family is so far away,” Aisha Price added. “It makes it easier to do things with each other.”
Every spring break, the water polo team travels to California to play some of the best teams on the West Coast. This season, the Crimson went 3-5 on the trip, including an 11-7 win over Occidental.
The two played against Occidental’s Nanea Fujiyama, who graduated from Kamehameha the same year as Aisha.
Harvard has also played three games against Villanova, which has three Punahou grads on its roster.
“We love playing against people we know from back home because we don’t get to see many people often being all the way up here,” Shayna Price said.
They also got a chance to play in front of their parents, who make the trip to California every year.
“They can’t fly to the East Coast to watch us because it’s too expensive and too far, so to be able to play with them there, that’s definitely the best part,” Aisha said.
This summer, the two will go their separate ways.
Aisha Price landed a job doing consulting work in Los Angeles, while Shayna, who still has a year to graduate, recently accepted an internship in Beijing.
The sisters are half-Chinese, but only Aisha is fluent.
“She majored in East Asia studies, so she’s fluent, but I’m not, so hopefully I can learn the language a little bit better,” Shayna Price. “It’s the first summer I’m not coming back to Hawaii, so I’m a little nervous about it.”