Former Mount Holyoke swimmer Catherine Herrold ’00 was inducted into the Mount Holyoke Athletics Hall of Fame on May 25.
By Emily Tarinelli ’25
Sports Editor
After a three-year delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Mount Holyoke Athletics admitted its fourth class of inductees to the Athletics Hall of Fame, according to a press release on the Lyons Athletics website. Catherine Herrold ’00, Langhan Dee ’04, Mary Mazzio ’83, Elizabeth Kennan ’60 and Penny Schneider Calf ’68 were all honored in a reception and dinner at the Willits-Hallowell Conference Center on Thursday, May 25.
Originally from York, Pa, Catherine Herrold ’00 first entered the water when her mother registered her for swim lessons as a baby. After climbing through the ranks of YMCA swim lessons, she joined a YMCA swim team, and the rest was history.
An economics major, Herrold was a four-year member of the Mount Holyoke Swimming and Diving team. During her time as an athlete, Herrold shattered eight team records across an array of freestyle events and relays, some of which were over 15 years old, according to a Lyons Athletics press release. Her records in the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500-meter freestyle, 400-meter individual medley and 400-meter freestyle relay still stand today, set in a time when Mount Holyoke’s competition swimming pool measured 25 meters across instead of 25 yards.
In 1997 — her first year at Mount Holyoke — Herrold competed in the 1,650-yard freestyle at the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III Swimming and Diving Championships. Her 11th-place finish in the event made her an Honorable Mention All-American. In 1998, she was the New England Women’s 8 conference champion in the 500- and 1,650-yard freestyle. After the NEW 8 became the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference later that year, she collected All-Conference honors at the first-ever NEWMAC championship meet.
Herrold’s most cherished memories, however, come from the friendships she made.
“We were a diverse group in terms of our backgrounds, our majors, our hobbies outside of swimming and our career aspirations, but we gelled together as a team and learned a lot about sportsmanship and about life from each other,” she said.
Herrold stated she has two favorite memories from her time on the team, the first being team dinners after practice in Torrey Hall.
“We still had decentralized dining and had to rush to get to Torrey before its dining hall closed at 7 p.m. We often sat at our tables long after the kitchen closed, talking and laughing together,” she said.
Her second fondest memory comes from participating in the Seven Sisters tournament, a meet that brought four other Seven Sisters schools together to compete.
“I appreciated that meet for the camaraderie that we all felt across [the] teams. Yes, we competed fiercely. But I also befriended swimmers and coaches from the other teams and even stayed in touch with many of them after graduation,” she said. Today, the spirit of the Seven Sisters swimming tournament persists in the Sisters Invitational, an annual meet attended by Mount Holyoke, Smith College, Wellesley College and a handful of non-Seven Sisters schools to celebrate women in athletics.
After graduating in 2000, Herrold went on to earn her Masters of Sciences in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom in 2004, her Master of Business Administration from Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Belgium in 2005 and her doctorate in Public Policy from Duke University in 2013.
With a background in business, nonprofit and government sectors, she has since moved on to a research-oriented sphere. She published her first book, “Delta Democracy: Pathways to Incremental and Civic Revolution in Egypt and Beyond,” in 2020.
“After about 10 years studying locally led democracy and development work in Egypt and Palestine — including during Egypt’s Arab Spring uprisings — I am now studying community philanthropy and informal grassroots mobilization in Serbia,” Herrold said. “Young people are increasingly disenchanted with formal nongovernmental organizations as vehicles through which to organize for change, and I study the forms of organization — from voluntary grassroots organizations to social movements, social enterprises, and community philanthropy groups – they are creating.”
Funded by a Fulbright scholarship, Herrold currently conducts fieldwork in Serbia and teaches a related course at the University of Belgrade. Her research will culminate in a book.
“I am proud that I pursued a path that I never could have imagined when I was in college,” Herrold said. “[My] work has given me the opportunity to live, work and study in England, Belgium, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine and Serbia and to travel extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East and learn the Arabic and Serbian languages. It has been a very fulfilling diversion from my original path.”
Today, Herrold continues to swim for pleasure, with the occasional competition along the way. This year, she represented Serbia in the open-water 2023 Winter World Swimming Championships, hosted in Bled, Slovenia. Whenever she is not busy conducting research abroad, she lives in Syracuse, N.Y.
Regarding who inspired her the most during her time at Mount Holyoke, Herrold’s answer was definitive: friends and dormmates.
“In conversations held in classes, over meals, at M&Cs, and late at night in our dorm rooms, I was exposed to new ways of seeing and making sense of the world,” she said.
Herrold also stated that her journey taught her never to predict the future.
“I find myself most fulfilled when I pursue unexpected opportunities,” she said.