BASKETBALL '07: Center of Attention

It’s not easy being 6’7, but for junior Emma Moretzsohn, it certainly helps on the basketball court.

Moretzsohn is coming off a sophomore season in which she emerged as one of the most dominant post players in the Ivy League, but the path to get there wasn’t easy.

“Emma is unstoppable, basically,” co-captain Lindsay Hallion says. “The only person that can stop Emma is herself. If she goes out there and believes that she can dominate, she will.”

Entering her freshman season, Moretzsohn was presented with a challenge she never faced during her successful high school career: for the first time, she was playing in a league where she didn’t tower over the competition.

“In college, I didn’t have that height advantage, so I had to get better at defense, get faster, get quicker,” she admits. I had to do all the things I was coasting through in high school.”

“I always think it’s more difficult for any basketball player—male or female—when you’re exceptionally tall,” coach Kathy Delaney-Smith adds. “[Emma] had to learn how to jump when she came here, she had to learn how to move.”

The transition to college basketball was a difficult one for Moretzsohn, who also had to learn to adjust to the increased level of physical play at the collegiate level.

“You can only imagine what is done to her body on the court,” Delaney-Smith says with a grimace. “It’s a physical game anyway inside, but it’s just going to hit her in different parts of her body.”

But after a frustrating freshman season, Moretzsohn knew what she had to do to reach the level of play she knew she was capable of.

“In the offseason, I really just tried to work on conditioning and getting stronger because I knew that would help me once we got to games,” she says. “I think that defensively, I’ve gotten a lot better.”

The extra effort Moretzsohn put into her play did the trick. She became more confident on the court and began to emerge as a dominant player last season.

“She’s 6’7, she has an unbelievable hook shot, and now she’s catching passes that she’s never caught before, and rebounding much better than I’ve ever seen her,” Hallion says. “If she misses her shot, she’s probably going to get the rebound and put it back in. It’s scary, if you’re guarding her. From talking to the other post players, it seems that if she gets it on the block, there’s nothing they can really do.”

Moretzsohn was just one important piece of last year’s Ivy League championship team. The team chemistry is what brought her to Harvard in the first place, and she credits the team’s turnaround last year to their comfort playing together.

“It really helped having played with all those girls for a year, we all just kind of clicked, and it made for a really good season,” Moretzsohn says.

Now, Moretzsohn and her teammates have turned their attention to the upcoming season. Though she suffered a brief setback in June when she broke her foot, she was back on the court by August, and has spent the last three months preparing to defend Harvard’s Ivy title.

Last year’s successful campaign has only served to raise the bar for Moretzsohn and the rest of the squad.

“I think as a team we clearly expect to get ourselves back in the position to win the Ivy League title and get back to the [NCAA] Tournament,” Moretzsohn says. “It’s not going to be easy. We have to play every game like it’s a championship game. There’s a lot of talent on our team and the potential to accomplish our goals, but it’s going to take a lot of work and dedication.”

Moretzsohn has already showed her coach and her captain that she isn’t afraid of the hard work demanded of her.

“The coaches have tested her every year and expected a lot of her and never really lowered those expectations,” Hallion says. “She’s been fighting mental and physical battles, and now she’s a veteran player that’s confident and ready to have a great year.”

“She’s done a tremendous job, and I think she’s matured into a level of toughness we were looking for from her,” Delaney-Smith adds.

Moretzsohn is raring to get back on the court and build on the success of her sophomore season.

“We want to start our season off right,” she says. “We’re all just ready to get the season underway, to work really hard and try to win as many games as we can.”