Emma Marsh is a senior at Frontier Charter School who will compete in diving at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, starting this fall.

The soon-to-be graduate comes from a family with an extensive military background, with her mother Christina serving 12 years in the Navy. When it came time for Emma Marsh to start looking at colleges to continue her diving career, she was naturally drawn to the three major service academies.

However, it wasn’t until she began meeting and speaking with graduates and cadets currently attending academies that she became “truly inspired to want to attend” one of the prestigious institutions.

“Each of them were incredible people,” Marsh said. “They had incredible stories to share and so much knowledge to give. They were really the kind of people I strive to become. They’re people who lead and inspire others, and I realized that they are my kind of people.”

She said she wants to be surrounded by others who aspire to be the best version of themselves, exuding selflessness, loyalty and integrity.

“I want to be part of a team that is close-knit and has similar beliefs and respect for one another, and that’s exactly what the service academies offer,” Marsh said.

Gaining admission to a service academy is arguably as arduous as trying to get into one of the top Ivy League schools as a non-legacy.

The application process includes submitting several essays, answering questionnaires about leadership and motivation, detailing extracurricular activities and completing a candidate fitness assessment (CFA) that must be administered by someone currently in or who has served in the military.

“(The CFA) was administered to me by the JROTC instructor at South (Anchorage High School) and then I had to do interviews,” Marsh said. “The first set of interviews was with former academy graduates who basically asked me similar questions to essay questions.”

She met and was interviewed by a graduate from each of the service academies she applied to. After that, she had a second set of interviews with a panel representing Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and submitted an essay to U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Being in good health and a stellar student in the classroom are also requirements, so she had to submit her high school transcripts, medical records and letters of recommendation from teachers and coaches for each application as well.

After meeting with graduates during the interview process, Marsh was initially leaning toward pursuing Navy for “quite some time,” but the deeper she dived into it and following visits to the three campuses, West Point emerged as her preferred destination.

“Getting to see the campus and getting to talk to cadets there, that’s where I felt the most at home,” she said. “It definitely felt different than when I visited the other academies. The diving coach was awesome, and getting to meet the team, they were very welcoming.”

Founded in 1802, West Point is the oldest of the five American service academies. Its regal atmosphere and architecture reminded Marsh of Hogwarts, the fictional school for wizards and witches from the iconic Harry Potter book and movie franchises.

“It’s definitely castle-like,” she said. “It was just insane getting to see it in person. The mess hall there definitely reminds me of the great hall at Hogwarts. It’s crazy, it’s crowded and exciting.”

Marsh grew up a big fan of the books and movies, and most identifies with the Slytherin house although her favorite character from the series hailed from Gryffindor.

“I think the ambition of a Slytherin is what I have for sure,” she said. “I liked Hermione (Granger) a lot. She was great.”

Marsh is interested in studying either war studies or English and perhaps a minor in Russian.

Nontraditional path to finding new passion

Growing up, Marsh’s favorite sport was gymnastics. She had participated in it for most of her life before trying diving on a whim as a senior in high school, and discovering a near-instantaneous love for it. Marsh competed at the high school level for South Anchorage.

“I wanted to try something new and transitioned into the world of diving, and I competed for my high school team my senior year,” she said. “Gymnastics translates very well into diving with our aerial awareness, so I was able to pick it up pretty easily and I just kind of fell in love with it after just a few practices.”

Following her lone season of competing in the sport at the high school level, with her second-place finish in the 1-meter diving competition at the ASAA state championships, Marsh realized that it was a sport she wanted to pursue at the collegiate level.

“That’s when my mom and I worked on getting videos done and sent in to multiple coaches to a lot of different colleges,” she said.

While Marsh’s diving career was seemingly spontaneous, it was promising and she was progressing very quickly.

“I was hoping that (coaches) would see that potential, hopefully, and they did,” she said. “That was definitely a long process of getting videos submitted to coaches and working really hard to get caught up to a place where they could see that I could be competitive in the college world.”

The strategy worked, and she was receiving offers for diving from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Virginia Tech — but she was sold on West Point after her visit.