PAT HORNE

It's 7:15 p.m. in Winthrop's dungeon-like dining room; the place empties as the last trays are gathered up and stacked onto the dishwasher belt, and the women's basketball team should be arriving any minute, scrubbed and washed for dinner after a hard two-hour practice. Stay tuned, the circus is about to begin.

"Good evening, Mother Superior."

"Good evening, Sister Denise."

"Hi, Mother Superior."

"Hello, Sister Margaret."

"Where's Sister Patricia?"

When the last of the heaping bowls of chocolate chip ice cream have been devoured and a satiated team sits back to shoot the breeze, Pat Horne arrives, flushed, happy, and HUNGRY.

"Where HAVE you BEEN, Sister Patricia?"

Heineken for Victory

"Carole (coach Kleinfelder) asked me to stay for some more drills for awhile. Guess what! Me and Janet (Judge, a freshman forward) are going to take on Carole and Flash (asst. coach Leslie Milne) in two-on-two for a six of Heineken."

"Aw, piece of cake."

"Go for the whole case, that way WE'LL get some, too."

"You guys will KILL them, no contest."

"I don't know," replies Horne with characteristic modesty. "What if we don't win?"

If Pat Horne has the slightest doubt of her competence on a basketball court, she is the only one. As one of last year's crop of new freshman sensations, including teammates Ann Scannell, Nancy Boutilier, Frenessa Hall, Kate Martin, and Marget Long. Horne has quietly and consistently developed into the Crimson's finest guard and a solid, all-around player.

In a tribute to her skills, Horne has started in every one of the hoopsters' 19 games this season, and it is a rare thing to see Pat Horne sitting on the bench.

Comparatively short to other women players at 5 ft. 5 in., Horne has had to make the transition to guard this year after excelling as a forward in junior high, high school, and numberless years of basketball camp down on the Cape, near her home town of Weymouth, Massachusetts. The transition has been, to say the least, highly successful, though Horne would be the last to admit it.

She says, "I know what I have to do, I just don't have the skills to do it." But statistics don't lie--Horne leads the team in steals with 64, three times more than anyone on the squad.

"I'm still learning, that's what I'm doing. Learning with every game." Horne leads the squad in assists with 53, more than twice as many as anyone else on the squad.

"I really miss rebounding. As a forward in high school it was really fun to crash the boards. Now I have to settle for a few defensive rebounds." Horne is second on the team in total rebounds, behind 6 ft. 1 in. center Elaine Holpuch, with 97. So much for modesty.

Vaselined Doorhandles

Meanwhile, back in the dining hall, Horne and her cohorts are reminiscing over last weekend's roadtrip to Princeton. It seems the resourceful hoopsters held a party in one of the hotel rooms, keeping Coach Kleinfelder preoccupied while Horne snuck back and smeared her doorhandles, toilet seat, and phone with Vaseline, switched her luggage, stashed her squash racket and other belongings under the sink, telephoned the desk and switched the morning wakeup call to 6 a.m., and then waltzed back nonchalantly to the party.

"Don't mention this in your story. Carole doesn't know yet that it was me," pleaded Horne.

"How about the time we shortsheeted Carole's bed?" recalls another hoopster, keeping the nostalgia rolling.

"And remember the time we blocked her door with newspapers and she couldn't get out?"

"Or the time we sewed her pajamas shut? Boy was that funny."

"And that time we took a screwdriver and switched all the numbers on the doors and Carole couldn't find her room!" No one ever said coaching was easy.

The hoopsters' recent trip to New York City to play Barnard was the highlight of the season for Horne, who had never tasted the pleasures of the Big Apple before. After trouncing Barnard, the team got to see "Annie" on Broadway, and Horne came back with her program autographed by actress Alice Ghostly known to fans of Bewitched as Esmerelda. Bewitched happens to be Horne's favorite show of all time, which the Winthrop sophomore sees every day she can.

"I was so psyched when I got her autograph. They all laugh at me, but I don't care--I'm going to have it framed."

The New York City trip was also the origin of "Mother Superior and the Sisters," where the hoopsters were bedded in long, cloister-like rooms in the attic of the Harvard Club and afterwards claimed that they knew what it felt like to be nuns.

The mention of nuns immediately prompts Horne into recounting her favorite movie, "Airplane."

"It's a great movie, it's really zany. How can you not think that movie is funny?" After a short pause, she adds "I guess I like to laugh at stupid jokes."

While Horne has already seen "Air-plane" four times, many on the team have never seen the movie and will never need to. "She tells it on every bus trip," recalls a teammate, adding. "I've never seen it, but I know it by heart, thanks to Pat."

That's Entertainment

As Horne jumps up from the table, swinging her arms in a mock punch scene, one can't help but be struck with the contrast between this lively, gesticulating comedian with the short brown bobbed haircut and laughing eyes, and the calm, cool, unruffled pointguard out on the court, setting the pace and bringing the ball down with a business-like attitude.

But maybe these two images are not really so different. After all, they're both Pat Horne, doing what she loves best.