Kathy Delaney Smith

Since the Ivy League began formal women's basketball play in 1979, the Crimson hoopsters have won less than 10 league games. Harvard hit the Ivy basement last year, winning only one of six games en-route to an overall 4-21 mark.

Few would argue that the job of turning the Crimson squad into a winner would be tough. But the hoopsters' rookie coach, Kathy Delaney Smith, disagrees. "I believe the women's program has unlimited potential," she says confidently.

Although the young Harvard squad boasts only a 2-5 mark so far this year, Delaney Smith remains optimistic. She still contends that her goal of a winning season is within reach. "We're not losers," she said recently, "and we're not going to play like losers."

Potential and confidence are two concepts that Delaney Smith constantly mentions when she talks about basketball at Harvard. She proved that she can carefully mold those qualities in any basketball player, during her coaching days at Westwood (Mass.) High School.

In 11 years of coaching there, Delaney Smith compiled an outstanding 204-11 record, while garnering Coach of the Year honors from two major Boston newspapers in 1981, as well as a similar award from the National High School Coaches' Association.

The Boston native applied for the coaching vacancy at Harvard, after Carole Kleinfelder (still coaching lacrosse here) resigned, because: "I had never really gotten a resume together or interviewed for a coaching job, and I wanted the experience."

When she came for her first interview, according to Co-Captain Pat Horne, "We were really very impressed with her, but some of the things she said--that she shows her players how to walk, how to play, how to behave on the court--sort of worried us." After interviewed as a finalist for the job--the only high school coach considered--she received unanimous approval.

The very thing that initially worried Horne, and other players as well, Delaney Smith's approach to coaching, has now earned her unlimited praise.

"We're in 211 billion times better shape than we ever were before," Hall remarked. "She pushes us to work hard. If I don't play my hardest in practice and in games, I feel like I'm cheating her and myself." Horne concurs, "I think everyone's play has gotten that much better, just because she asks that much more from us. It's not that we were never capable of giving a lot more before, it's just that no one ever asked it of us, except her."

It's Delaney Smith's disciplined coaching philosophy which has brought the most visible changes in the team so far. "I hope to convince the athletes here that they are capable of so much more than they believe they are. And that will extend into their expectations for themselves both on and off the court," she says.

In practice the hoopsters concentrate on fundamentals, with emphasis on maintaining an intensity in drills that they will need for games. The last minutes of practice are spent on a conditioning circuit, which includes jumping rope, toe raises and push-ups. Before tryouts, Delaney Smith encouraged her athletes to work out on their own, in a Nautilus program, while alternating days with sprint work and skill drills.

"Her system is like nothing I've ever heard of," freshman recruit Lori Stewart says of her coach. "She's very demanding, and she gets into a lot of mental concentration-imagery training. For example, if she doesn't feel we're playing our best in practice, she'll ask us to take a few minutes, close our eyes, and think of ourselves doing the drills at our best," Steward explains.

Delaney Smith has already established an easy-going rapport with her players, and much of the team's strength seems to be built in that relationship. "Her door is always open to us, and it's really easy to talk to her," Hall says. "She admits that she's human, and that she makes mistakes. On the court, she never gets angry at us when we do something wrong, she just helps us to learn so we don't do it again."

Remembering herself as a "very strong high school player," Delaney Smith says she started coaching while still attending Bridgewater State College. The school didn't have a women's basketball squad until her junior year, and by then, she was already involved in coaching. "My biggest regret, is that I never played women's college basketball," the 5-ft. 7-in. blonde admits. "I think that it is probably one of the best experiences for a college athlete."

Perhaps because she never played basketball in college, Delaney Smith knows that much more about the game. "I had to learn everything. I talked to coaches, and read lots of books I'm still reading lots of books on coaching."

After an early-season 101-61 loss to Quinnipiac College, the women's squad won its own Thanksgiving Invitational tourney, only to lose the next three consecutive games.

Delaney Smith feels the squad needs to work on confidence and intensity. "We don't play in games like we do in practice all the time," she concedes. "The first minutes of each half and the last few minutes of the game we do, but the rest of the time we let up." But she is not worried about the team's recent losing streak, "I'm very optimistic. I don't think this season has to be a transition year. I think we will have a very strong second half."