Where Are They Now: Beatrice Sims

Beatrice Sims graduated in 2008 from Grafton High School, where she played softball for four years (three on JV and one on Varsity). Also, she was the President of the National Honor Society and was a part of the academic decathlon team. During her high school years she was required to take a computer science course as part of Grafton’s curriculum, and though Sims admits “she hated computers because she couldn’t type to save her life,” she actually ended up liking the class and decided to pursue the subject in college.

When the time came, Sims left Grafton and went to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Hoping to get involved right away, she saw a sign for crew team try outs. With a little convincing from her mother and some hard work on her end, Sims made the team and is now entering her third season (fall and spring) with the Bears, mainly rowing on the Varsity Eight.

Sims is still pursuing her accidental love for computer science and has also added applied math as her second major. She has held an internship at the MathWorks in Natick, where she helps make MATLABS (engineering software) and in her free time she enjoys hanging out with her friends, watching TV and reading lots of history, mystery and Sci-Fi novels.

Favorite food: Bagels with cream cheese

Favorite movie: Star Wars Original Trilogy

Favorite athletic team: The Boston Red Sox

Favorite book: I’ve read so many, so I don’t think I could possibly pick just one, but one that I’ve read several times and enjoyed is called Map of Bones by James Rollins.

What’s on your i-Pod right now? A mix of workout music and bad 90’s music.

What have you been up to since you graduated in 2008 from Grafton High School?

I graduated from Grafton in 2008 and now I’m at Brown University. I started rowing pretty much after I got here. They had a meeting for people that were interested in walking onto the team and I went because it was something that I thought was sort of interesting, although I had no experience whatsoever. I’m majoring in applied math and computer science, so I’m taking those kinds of courses this semester.

Are you apart of any clubs or do any extracurricular activities at Brown?

I work for dining services. I make pizzas at one of the campus-owned pizza places and I also cashier. I do tours once a week for the Admissions Office. I’ve also done a couple of performance groups. I was in the swing dance club for a little while and I’m a member of AWK, which is Brown’s Most Awkward A Cappella group. It’s for people who can’t sing or don’t have a lot of time to practice, so we practice about one hour a week and have one concert a semester.

Can you talk a little bit about your Crew experience so far at Brown?

It’s very competitive. It’s a Division I sport and it’s been 14 years since the NCAA started having woman’s rowing championships and Brown has finished in the top five every year. So it’s really competitive and a huge time commitment. We practice five or six days a week depending whether or not we’re in season. There is a fall season and a spring season, so it’s sort of an all year sort of thing. But it’s so much fun, it’s something that I never really thought I’d be doing when I was in high school, but then I came here and now I just love the sport and the team. It’s been great.

We race in eight’s and four’s, so it’s eight rowers or four rowers and you usually have a First Varsity Eight, a Second Varsity Eight and a Varsity Four, and those are the ones that compete at nationals at the end of May. The goal is to be in the Varsity Eight.

Have you ever reached the Varsity Eight, if not, where do you typically row?

Spring of my sophomore season, I started on the Second Varsity Eight and about a third of the way through that season I managed to get my way into the First Varsity Eight and we did pretty well the rest of the season; We came in fifth as a team at Nationals. I’m typically in the Varsity Eight.

What made you choose Brown in the first place?

One of the things I really liked about Brown was the open curriculum, there are no gen ed requirements, the only required classes are the ones you have to take for your major; there’s a lot of freedom with that. It’s also really great because you know that everyone in your class wants to be there. I liked that the environment of Brown was very collaborative, and it’s not so much as what did you get on the last exam, but it’s when do you want to work on the problem set together.

What made you decide that you wanted to try out for Brown’s Crew team?

Well, I’d been to the Head of the Charles before, so I’ve seen rowing and my mom had always told me that “you have the perfect body type, you’re so tall, and you’d be awesome at it.” So rowing was always something I was interested in…so there was a meeting for anyone who was interested in walking on and they spent the first couple weeks with us teaching us how to row, how to put your oar in the water, how to hold everything. Then the coaches met with us and talked how they thought we were doing. They didn’t make any cuts, but they said here is what we think you’re future will be like and we went from there and we became part of the team.

It seems like you are very involved at Brown, were you the same way while attending Grafton High School?

Yes. I played JV softball for three years and then varsity softball my senior year and I’ve been playing softball since about sixth grade; I wasn’t terribly athletic. My senior year of high school I walked the third lap of the mile, so if you told me in high school I would have played a DI varsity sport in college, I probably would have laughed at you. Softball was fun and I really enjoyed the sport. Non-athletically I was National Honor Society president my senior year and was on the Academic Decathlon team, sort like now, I just stay busy and get involved in a lot of things.