From Hungary to Harvard

With a starting role on the Harvard women’s basketball team and a resume that includes Hungarian junior national team experience, Reka Cserny is not your typical freshman in Ec 10.

Cserny comes to Harvard after deferring a year to compete for Hungary in the European Junior Championships. Now she is ready to battle for the Ivy League Championship with the Crimson.

Phenomenal basketball skills aside, Cserny’s journey to the States shows the level of dedication she has to succeed at more than just the game of basketball.

“My main reason for coming here was to be able to play basketball at a high level and get a good education because in Hungary it’s not easy to do both of them,” Cserny said.

Harvard first established contact with Cserny based on scouting reports, and she set her sights on coming to Cambridge. After failing to post high enough verbal scores on the SATs on her first attempt, Cserny ordered books from the States and then studied for a year, improving her scores markedly on her second try.

“The initiative was all hers and not ours,” said Harvard Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith. “It was all 100 percent hers to make this happen for her in her life, and I really admired that for a kid that young. She probably could have had her pick of schools, but she wanted Harvard.”

Cserny also established contact with fellow Hungarian and Harvard track standout Dora Gyorffy ’01—the two-time NCAA high jump champion—when she began considering Harvard.

“When I started to think about coming to Harvard, I knew that [Gyorffy] was here,” Cserny said. “I called her, and we met in Budapest.”

The pair still keeps in touch, and Harvard hopes that Cserny will become the same sort of superstar for the basketball team as Gyorffy was for the track team.

Cserny, as one of just ten players selected to compete with Hungary in the European Championships, is a standout competitor in her native country. Cserny said she would like to continue playing at an elite level, but in a different context.

“It was really good to play on the national team, and I hope I have an opportunity to play in something like that here [in the States],” Cserny said.

The path to international competition started in the second grade for Cserny, when she began honing her basketball skills for typical reasons.

“My mother used to play basketball, and I was taller than average,” Cserny said. “I kept playing because I loved it.”

Now 6’3, Cserny is the inside presence of Harvard’s dreams.

Delaney-Smith said that Cserny is even more of a complete player than Diana Caramanico—the Ivy League’s all-time leading scorer who graduated from Penn last year—because of her three-point shot and her post up.

“She just flat out can play the game,” said Delaney-Smith. “She’s got height. She’s got three-point shooting. She can drive to the hole. She’s a great passer. She’s a very good defender. She’s the whole package.”

Delaney-Smith expects that Cserny, like reigning Ivy Rookie of the Year Hana Peljto the year before, will make an immediate difference in the Ivies this year.

“Right now I don’t see freshmen impacting other teams like our freshman our impacting us,” Delaney-Smith said. “What Reka is doing and what Hana did last year is special stuff.”

And Cserny welcomes the high expectations of her as a freshman.

“I know that freshman generally don’t start, but in Europe we don’t have these rules that the younger people play less,” Cserny said. “I think the only thing that should decide who starts is how you play in practice. There is only a two- or three- year age difference in the players so it’s not so important.”

Peljto applauds Cserny’s attitude as a testament to her maturity.

“She makes very good decisions on the court,” Peljto said. “She doesn’t have the freshman mentality that all freshman go through.”

Peljto, a fellow European who emigrated to the U.S. from Serbia in 1995, provides a welcome reference for Cserny as she encounters challenges in playing American basketball.

“She’s a great team player,” Peljto said. “She makes everyone look good and she’ll make a very good impact this year and for years to come.”

In her first collegiate games, Cserny caught her opposition by surprise. She scored 19 points and grabbed a team-high eight rebounds in a 77-54 victory over Wagner. The second game of the season saw Cserny score 13 points and handle nine boards in a 93-77 Crimson loss to BU.

But thereafter, the release of Harvard game tapes meant that Reka was no longer a secret. The immediate impact that Cserny had in her first two games was tempered in the next two contests, in which the freshman scored four and zero points against Fairfield and Villanova, respectively.

The simultaneous decrease in scoring and increase in turnovers was also a result of the adjustments that Cserny has had to make after having played European basketball for 11 years. The way traveling is called in the U.S. has been difficult for Cserny to adjust to at the outset of the season.

“I hope for more consistency from the officiating [regarding the traveling turnovers], but she’ll adjust her game,” junior guard Jenn Monti said. “It’s tough to have so much be expected of her right away.”

Additionally, the change in style and flow of the game is something that Cserny is finding different from her days in Hungary.

“In Europe, it is more important that your basketball technique is good, and it’s not so aggressive and not so quick as here,” Cserny said. “In America, the athleticism of the player is more important than in Europe. I still have to make a lot of adjustments.”

The change is something that Cserny is welcoming as she embarks on her collegiate career.

“I really like the intensity here because I didn’t get that in Europe,” Cserny said. “I think it helps us be much better players, so it’s really important.”

As her American basketball develops, Cserny is also dealing with adjusting to her new home for the school year.

“Fortunately I’m busy enough so I don’t have to think about being homesick,” Cserny said. “Sometimes it comes up, but it’s not so bad.”

While she is separated from her family in Budapest, Cserny is finding the team welcome company.

“The team is really good, and there is a really good atmosphere there,” Cserny said. “Everyone wants to work hard, and I think that we can excel this year.”

With Harvard selected as the preseason favorite to win the Ivies, Harvard is hoping that Cserny will provide a big piece of the puzzle for Crimson success this year.