Three Crist sisters were student-athletes at Washington University, with middle sister Lizzy experiencing college with both her older sister Katie and younger sister Maggie. Katie was a swimmer, while Lizzy and Maggie both played soccer.
“I was looking through that one book that every potential college student looks at,” Katie recalled. “I liked biology and psychology and ended up touring a ton of colleges with those majors. (WashU head swimming and diving coach) Brad (Shively) and (then assistant coach and now UChicago Assistant Athletic Director for Student-Athlete Development) Nicole (Kaupp) emailed me that they wanted me to come to WashU on a recruiting trip. I immediately felt like I fit in. The people were athletic and smart and so lovable. It felt like coming home. The original review I read was right, but it was the fitting in that was great.”
Lizzy left no doubt that she was going to follow her sister to WashU.
“Her going to WashU 100 percent impacted my decision. I really didn’t go on any tours other than WashU. I was just ready to follow Katie and experience what she was experiencing,” Lizzy acknowledged. “I ended up taking the tour and came away with the same feeling she did. People were really committed to academics and their careers, but also really invested in athletics. It was an easy decision for me.” Katie reinforced that. “Lizzy basically said, ‘I am going to Katie’s college or nowhere.’”
Katie did consider Northwestern before choosing WashU. “It was elite academically with a strong swim program. WashU was the same but small enough that you are all friends developing every aspect of you as a person, moving from a young adolescent to a young adult,” she described.
“I was one of the few high school athletes from the Minnesota Thunder Academy to choose a Division III program, as the academy is a feeder for Division I schools. I thought about that, but at the end of the day, while I loved soccer and the community, it wasn’t all I wanted to do in college. Science and engineering were ultimately more important,” she explained. “WashU was unique in that I could play soccer at an elite level that was highly competitive and serious, but with an understanding that you are still there to be a student first and an athlete second. The entire administration, especially head coach Jim Conlon, supports you and understands the dual role. That made my decision seamless.”
According to her sisters, Maggie was the one who was really considering Division I options, but she saw WashU as an obvious choice. “If two sisters are really enjoying the same school from academics to friends, there is a good chance that I would go there. I essentially took an unofficial tour visiting Katie and Lizzy and saw them have so much fun. It was not even a risk that I was applying. I was all in,” she stated. “I did go on a couple trips to meet people in my future soccer class. They were incredible and welcoming. It was a soccer program I could see myself fitting in with and being around high-achieving, high-performing people.”
Maggie’s first year was a unique one for the family as Katie was at WashU Medical School and Lizzy was a junior, so the three sisters were all in St. Louis at the same time. “As the middle child, I always had a push and pull with them. I used to complain that I never got to go anywhere on my own. Once I got to college, I realized how special it was to have bookend people in my life. Katie guided me through all different levels of college and kept me in my lane with safeguards,” Lizzy communicated. “It was special having Maggie there as a sister and teammate wrapped up in one. We had great experiences rooming together, taking bus rides together, and even winning WashU’s first women’s soccer NCAA championship. We were able to connect on and off the field the two years we played together. Our parents also loved that we were all centrally located.”
With two sisters having led the way, Maggie immediately felt she belonged at WashU. “When I first came in, I was known as the littlest Crist. My sisters had already set a foundation of friends and as members of the athletics community,” she said. “It made preseason easier having two sisters there. I remember our parents came to see us for Thanksgiving my first year. I got everything I wanted and more going to WashU.”
Katie married another WashU swimmer, Luke Duschl, and they live in Boston. She is a Consult and Liaison Psychiatry Fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Luke, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and materials science as WashU, along with an MBA from the Carlson School of Management, is the Manager of Technical Programs at Amazon.
Lizzy earned her PhD in biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota’s medical school and moved to Boston to work as the Business Development Manager and U.S. Technical Lead for AIM Biotech, a startup whose technology is similar to what she developed during her PhD. “In my role, I get to see the other side of science — the people who do drug testing using different technologies, like AIM Biotech’s, and how treatments developed for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. As a graduate student, I didn’t see the science in action as much as I do now,” she commented.
Maggie followed her sisters to WashU, but not to Boston (yet) or in their fields of study. “They have been successful in science and medicine, which is great but the standard field for our family is marketing as both our parents and grandparents were marketers,” stated Maggie, who is now an account supervisor for the creative agency Betty in Minneapolis, Minnesota, close to their hometown of Wayzata. “It is fun because our parents worked in that world, and we got to attend events together before they retired a year ago.”