ANALYSIS: Women's Basketball

It all went so well—and so poorly.

Two years after romping undefeated through the Ivy League—and just one season after a disappointing 2004 run—seniors Reka Cserny and Katie Murphy went out with blessedly graceful swan songs.

One senior watched from the bleachers.

“I tore my ACL the first day,” says Rochelle Bell.

Bell, the 5’9 shooting guard and defensive whiz from Brooklyn Park, Minn., entered her senior season as the second-most experienced player on the Crimson.

Only Cserny, the 2005 Ivy League Player of the Year, had played as many games during the 2001-02 freshman year campaign. No member of the team had started as many contests—27—as Bell did during her sophomore year. And yet no one came to embody the ups and downs of the Harvard program quite like Bell did.

“At the end of our sophomore year we had back the entire lineup,” she remembers. “My junior year, my last year, was probably one of the most difficult challenges of my life. It was a huge change.”

The change?

“From us being good,” she says, “to us losing.”

Months before the Class of 2005 captured the program’s ninth title on the strength of a dominant stretch run, it faltered its way through a nightmarish 2004.

Back from the 2003 team that pushed No. 3 seed Kansas State to the brink of defeat in the first round of the NCAA tournament was every starter—including Hana Peljto ’04, the two-time Player of the Year.

Suffering under the immense burden of expectation, the team ran a 9-5 league record—a disappointment after the undefeated season the year before—and finished tied with Brown for second in the Ivies.

In the meantime, Bell suffered a back injury and received a cortisone shot before that season began. She lost her starting job and worked hard last summer to get it back.

“I stayed [at Harvard] so I could use all of the resources here,” she says. “I didn’t want to disappoint.”

On the first day of fall practice, bad luck struck.

Bell jumped on a lay-up attempt—“kind of funny,” she explains—and heard a pop on the rise. She fell in a heap under the basket.

Her teammates carried her to the doctor, who diagnosed the ACL tear right away. Bell’s playing career ended a year early.

The transition from player to spectator took time. But says Bell, “even though I lost the basketball side of the season, I didn’t lose my teammates.”

After a home loss to Brown on Feb. 11, the Crimson exhilarated fans with a dominant run through the Ivies. Harvard outscored its opponents by an average of 20 points over seven games and then tackled favored Dartmouth in a play-in for the league championship on March 8.

Bell watched from the stands.

“It was so exciting,” she says. “Every game was so nervous. It’s definitely more nervous when I’m watching.”

Meanwhile, Harvard’s prized recruit from Westwood, Mass., freshman Lindsey Hallion, tore her ACL early in the season. Bell consoled Hallion served as her mentor—the elder of “the ACL sisters.”

“I wanted to be so sad for her,” Bell says, “but had to pretend like it was not a big deal.”

From the sideline, from the stands—Bell looks back on it all with bittersweet fondness.

“It was the best and most important time of my life,” she says.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.