“The oboe helped me a lot to cope with stress, even with Water Polo. This is so embarrassing, but sometimes, when I was upset, I would play my oboe and just sob. It was the best stress reliever.”
If the thought of playing a challenging woodwind is not your idea of self-care, Claudia Lee might be tougher than you. And pretty much everyone else. Because Lee is a Division I athlete in a demanding sport for a school over six thousand miles away from her home and family. For Lee, the hard way is the only way forward.
On a small couch in Claudia Lee’s dorm apartment that she shares with three other girls, the walls are lined with fairy lights and DIY wall paintings that she and her housemates decorated with, adding a hot pink bar cart that brightens a corner. Lee, a player for the South Korean national women’s water polo team and the Marist University women’s water polo team, detailed her lost love of playing the oboe.
Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, but grew up in Palos Verdes, California. She stayed well-connected to her Korean roots as a dual citizen, as she and her mother spoke only to each other in Korean. Lee calls her relatives in Korea every Lunar New Year saying, “새해 복 많이 받으세요 (saehae bok mani badeuseyo),” which means “Good luck in the New Year.” She traveled to Korea at least four times a year from infancy until middle school. Her parents moved back to Korea two and a half years ago, so she travels back and forth during breaks.
“She shares her culture with me and my family with treats for my kids,” said Chris Vidale, Marist water polo head coach. “One of the first things Claudia and I did was have a meal together with her parents at a Korean restaurant, so it was fun to get to know them through food—one of my favorite things.”
Lee loves her Korean heritage and has traditional Asian parents. She was expected to get straight A’s. As an only child with a lot of energy, her parents put her in sports and expected her to excel. Lee danced, swam, and played tennis, but they didn’t feel challenging enough for her.
“Asian parents are very strict,” said Lee. “It’s a little different for me because not only are my parents strict, but they’re thousands of miles away…and my mom is still on my ass. I’ve always had a helicopter around me; my mom is very much a helicopter mom.”
At nine years old, Lee was approached by a water polo club coach at a friend’s Christmas dinner party. He told her she should try water polo because she was tall, athletic and looked strong. Lee had not heard of water polo and was hesitant initially. Her mother also did not like the idea, claiming that water polo is a “man’s sport,” but Lee eventually attended practice and loved every minute of it. Against her mother’s will, she kept playing.
“Claudia can jump out of the water up to her knees, hold the ball in her hand and just rip it and that’s one of the most exciting things about her,” said Vidale. “She has great body balance and movement in the water.”
Lee loves water polo for its complexity and the blurred lines of each position. You may be a “utility” or “defender,” but it’s just a title. Anyone can make a drive and score or come back and block a shot. As a psychology major, she also enjoys analyzing her opponents and figuring out their strong and weak points.
“Claudia is so disciplined and extremely hard working,” said Viktoria Kiss, Claudia’s teammate at Marist. “She always leads by example and is so persistent and mature.”
Around the same time she started water polo, Lee started playing the oboe, one of the hardest instruments to play. Her mother’s friend, a professional oboist, suggested Lee try it out. She won multiple contests and played three years in a program called the California All-State Entertainment Community (CASMEC), with opportunities to play with some of the top instrumentalists and musicians in the country.
Music became Lee’s escape and a way to express herself that words or playing sports couldn’t. When life wasn’t going right, she turned to the oboe and practiced for two or more hours a day, playing out any emotions.
For college, Lee had to decide between playing water polo or playing the oboe. She had options of majoring in music at Johns Hopkins University or the University of Southern California, but she decided being a student-athlete sounded cooler than being a music major.
Two years ago, Lee was recruited by a Korean men’s national water polo team player on Facebook to play for the new Korean women’s national water polo team.
“I guess you could say a big part of my career so far is that,” said Lee. “I went to Hong Zhou for the Asian Games. I played in Thailand for the Asian Championships. But our stats aren’t very good because we’re a brand new team.”
The team is made up of women who could swim fast, throw the ball–maybe catch the ball–and wrestle. They had little experience working together and being cohesive.
While the team is not under the Korean Olympic Committee (KOC) because it is a new team and they don’t have enough wins and medals to be classified under the KOC, it is under the Korean Swimming Federation and classified as the National Women’s Water Polo Team.
As a senior, Lee is coming to terms with being an adult in the working world. She says that, in the past few weeks, she has cried more than she has in her whole life. She’s conflicted about the future. Lee could go back to Korea and live with her parents, where she could get surgery on her torn rotator cuff and keep playing water polo for the national team, or go to graduate school at Seoul University and coach. But what’s calling her name is to find a job in psychology in the U.S. and make it out in the United States on her own.
“I feel like I’m having a mid-life crisis,” said Lee. “I never want to do the easy thing. In times like this, I wish I still played the oboe. I would be a more emotionally regulated person.”
Edited by Marley Pope
Graphic by Kira Crutcher; Photos from Marist Athletics
For more coverage of Marist athletics, follow @cfmarist on Instagram, X, TikTok and Bluesky. Sign up to receive daily alerts here.