Hathaway hopes to finally settle at Penn

The final buzzer had sounded in the North Merrick-North Bellmore basketball league's season opener, but not a single person moved from his seat. It was a Sunday afternoon in December 1988. Before the game, parents wondered whose fifth- and sixth-grade boys were more talented. But when the game ended, it was a girl, to many fans' shock, the coach's daughter-- Chelsea Hathaway -- who stole the show -- scoring 17 points against her all-male competition. Eight years removed from the musty schoolhouse gym in North Merrick, N.Y., Hathaway currently serves as the point guard for the Penn women's basketball team. The frosh is still turning heads on the basketball court. At the point for Penn -- a team just 3-23 a year ago -- the newest Quaker has already helped the Red and Blue earn six victories. Stronger than most Ivy League women, the 5-foot-9 guard has found the knack for driving to the hole and breaking down opposing defenses. She is the blue-chip prospect that Penn coach Julie Soriero so desperately needed after losing All Big-5 center Natasha Rezek to graduation. It seems that not much has changed for Hathaway since her elementary school days, when she dominated the court at Old Mill. It appears like just another case of a great basketball player coming to a school with a losing record and helping to turn things around. But this, in fact, is not the case. It was a bumpy, winding road that brought Hathaway to Penn -- a road that included two junior highs and two high schools in a six-year span. And it's a road that Soriero hopes will end with Hathaway finding a four-year home at Penn. "We have a list of kids who are in the eighth grade right now, who when we can legally recruit them we will," Soriero said. "I first heard of Chelsea Hathaway in the middle of her junior year. I knew she had solid grades and was interested in us. I was at the AAU [Amateur Athletic Union] Tournament in Dallas, Texas, on July 1 and I remember calling [Hathaway] for the first time from outside a McDonald's restaurant. I spoke to her father for 40 minutes, and she was out playing basketball." It is no surprise that Chelsea's father, Brion Hathaway, kept Soriero on the phone for nearly an hour. The former AAU coach had steered his older daughter, Leslie, toward Lehigh 11 years prior, and then to Belgium, where she played professionally. He had taught Chelsea basketball from the time she was 3-years-old and was willing to do anything -- and move anywhere -- to give Chelsea the chance to compete in basketball. "After every game, Chelsea calls her dad," Hathaway's roommate, Jen Houser said. "They always talk extensively about the game." Chelsea started playing competitive basketball in the AAU league, which her father describes as a "Junior Olympic-type program." She then played junior high school ball at Salk -- before moving to Farmingdale, and then back to Salk. "Part of the reason why we switched from Salk was tennis," Brion Hathaway said. "Chelsea was also a big-time tennis player and it was partly because of the commitment to tennis." When Hathaway graduated from junior high, she enrolled in St. Mary's, a Catholic school on Long Island with a reputation for basketball excellence. The two-sport high school star was ranked No. 2 on Long Island in tennis and started immediately on varsity in basketball. In just two years, Hathaway had made herself one of the standout athletes on Long Island. But she began to worry that she was getting better and the competition wasn't. So, after Chelsea's sophomore year of high school, the Hathaway family picked up and moved again. This time, the Hathaways left Long Island in favor of Queens, N.Y., where the family had lived when Chelsea was born. This enabled Hathaway to attend Christ the King -- New York state champions seven years in a row, and the same school that Leslie attended 11 years before. "I don't have the same history as most kids," Hathaway said. "I'm glad to get to sample a lot of schools." Although Hathaway arrived in the top-flight basketball program, there was a place in the rotation waiting for her when she arrived. Head coach Vincent Cannizaro knew Brion Hathaway from their coaching days in AAU. He coached Chelsea briefly in junior high at AAU and remembered her as both a competitor on the court, and before that, as the 3-year old who followed Leslie around to all of her games. In her junior year at Christ the King, Cannizaro played Hathaway off the bench at four different positions but primarily at power forward. Surrounded by high-caliber players, the future Quaker took her game to the next level -- improving her passing and rebounding. But it was a difficult transition from St. Mary's to the improved competition at Christ the King. And whenever things would get difficult for Hathaway on the court, she would spend time with her pets. "All the times when things were bad, Chelsea would spend time with her dogs," her father said. "She loved to teach them new tricks." The following season, when Hathaway had become acclimated to the setting at Christ the King, Cannizaro inserted her as a starter, switching between power forward and point guard -- a position that gave Chelsea the power to run the show. She responded by averaging 12 points, eight rebounds, and four assists per game -- helping Christ the King to a No. 2 finish in the nation. By the start of her senior basketball season at Christ the King, however, the pressure was off the Street and Smith Honorable Mention All-American, who had accepted early decision to play basketball at Penn, and still enjoyed playing tennis in the spring. Throughout high school, Hathaway had moved around from place to place to help foster her athletic career. But when it came time to make a college decision, the standout high school player did not to let a basketball team's record affect her decision. "I didn't pick a basketball school," Hathaway said. "I looked at Ivy League schools. I chose a school that I wanted to go to. I just wanted to make any contribution that I could to the team." For Soriero, the successful recruitment of Chelsea Hathaway provides hope that even at an Ivy League school -- where scholarships are prohibited -- there's still the opportunity to recruit a player from one of the elite high schools. Hathaway joins freshmen Shelly Fogarty and Jen Houser as the foundation for future Quakers teams. And while the Red and Blue will likely not rise to No. 2 in the nation like Christ the King, Hathaway may help the Quakers rise to the top of the Ancient Eight. In return, Hathaway hopes to find a home -- about the only thing that the 5-foot-9 guard is yet to experience -- for the next four years in the Quakers backcourt.

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