Athlete of the Week: Jenn Monti '02

Senior point guard Jenn Monti has longtime been considered one of the greatest passers in Crimson history.

On Monday, she made another landmark pass: she passed Jessica Gelman ’97 to become Harvard’s all-time leader in assists with 486 for her career.

Monti had already owned the Harvard record for assists in a game with 14 and shared the record for assists in a season with 152. Now, her place among guards in th e Harvard record book is unmatched.

With 107 assists in just 16 games, she’s on pace to blow away the Crimson single-season assist record. Monti’s 6.5 assists per game is good for 15th in the nation. And her 1.95 assist-to-turnover ratio this season is more than a 40 percent improvement over her previous best.

There is one glaring void in Monti’s career profile thus far: Ivy League titles. But she has Harvard in position to change that this season.

“It’s pretty evident that this is the first class in a long time not to have won an Ivy title,” Monti said at the season’s outset. “I’ve thought about what was missing freshman, sophomore and junior years, and I see the pieces that were missing on this year’s team. Hopefully we’ll be rewarded this time around.”

Going into this weekend, Harvard stood even with Cornell and Princeton with one Ivy loss, and the Crimson’s 11-5 overall record is far and away the league’s best. Though Monti is short in stature at 5’6, her dual ability to make the big score and the big pass has made her a big part of Harvard’s success.

Granted, the presence of 6’3 freshman Reka Cserny, as well as the scoring force of 6’2 sophomore Hana Peljto and 6’0 sophomore rebounding queen Tricia Tubridy, has made the assists come much easier for Monti this season. But the forwards have found greater success this year because Monti has opened up scoring chances for her teammates largely by being a scoring threat herself.

Her 21 three-point field goals lead the team. Most surprising is that Monti’s best total for a full season is 22, and 16 of those treys have come in Harvard’s last eight games. The improvement came as Harvard Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, the self-proclaimed “biggest fan” of Monti, insisted that she take more shots during a mid-December meeting.

“I said, ‘Jenn, I like your shot. You don’t take bad shots and you’re very accurate. But for some reason that’s gone south this year. I like you when you’re open to take the shot.’ And so she did it, and it worked,” Delaney-Smith said.

Her best game this year came in Harvard’s Ivy opener against Dartmouth, when she scored 15—one short of her career high—and dished out 10 assists.

“Jenn Monti was a tremendous leader on the floor and everytime we needed an extra rebound or run, we got it,” Delaney-Smith said after the game.

Nothing less would be expected from Monti as Harvard makes its run back to the Big Dance.

—DAVID R. DE REMER