With a record 630 wins, Harvard women's basketball coach steps down
She led the Crimson to 11 Ivy League titles but her true legacy is her commitment to gender equity and women's athletics
The Harvard women's basketball team had just been steamrolled by Princeton, a powerhouse ranked in the nation's top 25, losing by 20 points. Kathy Delaney-Smith, Harvard's coach, was taking questions from the press in a small room above the Harvard home court. A reporter asked if Annie Stritzel should get more playing time after having scored eight points with three rebounds and three assists in limited time in the game they'd just played.
"You want me to play her more?" Delaney-Smith said, genially. "Let me see what I did here."
She consulted a sheet containing the game stats.
"Yeah," she said. "She should play more. You're right." She paused, then added, "I hate that. Who invited you to this press conference?" Everyone, including Delaney-Smith laughed.
Photo Credit: Harvard Athletics
To truly appreciate this moment of candor, try to recall the last time you heard any elected official, military general, captain (or for that matter, even lieutenant) of industry, doctor, lawyer and especially coach or manager in sports admit they made a mistake.
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A few days after that press conference, Delaney-Smith's Harvard Crimson would play Princeton again in the first round of the Ivy League championship tournament. This time, it was a close, taut contest but, again, Princeton won, this time by just five points. With that loss, the curtain fell on Delaney-Smith's 40-year college coaching career. She spent all those four decades at the helm of the Harvard women's basketball team amassing 630 wins (and 434 losses). She holds the record for most wins by an Ivy League basketball coach -- either women's or men's teams.
I spoke to Delaney-Smith, 72, two weeks earlier about her coming retirement. She said she had made the decision last fall.
"It's time for me to do something else," she said.
When I congratulated her, she replied with just a hint of self-mockery. "That's what everyone is saying. And I'm, like, why? Why am I being congratulated for quitting?"
Kathy Delaney-Smith is not just a basketball coach with a successful career. She is that, yes, but that's a small piece of her resume and legacy. She has also been a fierce champion and advocate for women's athletics and gender equity, beginning long before either was popular.
"It's my reason for living, for sure," Delaney-Smith told me. "In the world, I want all equity, not just gender equity."
Delaney-Smith grew up in the Boston suburb of Newton, raised by parents who taught their children that girls could aspire to and achieve anything a boy could. She believed them.
"I was raised in a family where you could do anything you wanted," she said. "There wasn't any difference between girls and boys. Not like in the world."
As a child, she shot hoops by herself at a nearby playground. In high school, she excelled at basketball, becoming the first girl in Massachusetts to score 1,000 points. She went on to Bridgewater State College expecting to play basketball. When she got there, she discovered there was no women's basketball team, just a basketball club. So, she inquired about swimming competitively. There was no girls swim team either.
"All they had was synchronized swimming," she recalled. "I was appalled. I couldn't get out of there fast enough and the woman running the program chased me. She convinced me to be a synchronized swimmer for four years, which I did. Very fun."
After graduating, she got a job as a teacher at Westwood High School, a public school, where they had just built a swimming pool.
"I wanted to start their swimming program," she said. "The superintendent's daughter played basketball and they were not very good. He said, 'Can you coach the basketball team and win?' I said yes. So, he gave me the job."
She taught classes, coached swimming and also basketball -- the freshmen, junior and senior varsity teams.
Under Delaney-Smith, the girls varsity basketball team lost their first eleven games. Then, they started to win. And win. They racked up six consecutive undefeated seasons. But Delaney-Smith wasn't happy with how the girls sports teams were being treated.
"There was no salary (equality), no staff, no uniforms, no gym time," she said. "We were like second-class citizens in a public high school. I'm like, this isn't right. The school didn't want to spend any money on uniforms. I thought that was awful. I had no salaries for assistants. They wouldn't give me gym time. The boys always had the best gym time. I would go to the principal and talk about it. It didn't work."
So. she filed a series of lawsuits, citing the federal Title IX statute that prohibits discrimination based on sex by any educational program receiving federal funds. Her suits were merged and went to arbitration. They got the desired results.
"It all worked perfectly," she said.
{Photo credit: Harvard Athletics
In 1981, Harvard was looking for a new women's basketball coach. They couldn't fail to have noticed Delaney-Smith, who had by then compiled an astounding record of success in her eleven years at Westwood High.
"There was a tradition in the early Eighties where if you were the local successful high school coach, we (Harvard) should extend an invitation to interview you," she said. "I didn't really want the job. I loved Westwood. I thought there was more equity work to do. I just went over because I was told I should as a professional courtesy -- to myself. And when I went over there, I absolutely fell in love with Harvard and wanted the job really badly and wished I had prepared better. But I guess I prepared okay."
In her 40 years, Delaney-Smith won eleven Ivy League titles and had eleven seasons with at least 20 wins. In 1998, they were in the NCAA playoffs and faced Stanford, one of the best teams in the country (albeit with two starters out injured).
"I said to them, 'There is no one in this entire country who thinks we are going to win this game except the 20 people in this room now,'" she remembered. "You can imagine Harvard pride. Ivy League pride. As soon as you say that to someone, that is very powerful."
Harvard upset Stanford 71-67. They were the first Number 16 seed to defeat a Number 1 seed in the history of either the men's or women's NCAA basketball tournaments.
"That was absolutely surreal," she said.
As she steps away from the game, Delaney-Smith says what she will miss are her relationships with the players and assistant coaches. The incomparable camaraderie of a team. She remains in touch with many of her former players. She says she fervently believes that basketball experience was invaluable preparation for life.
"I have always viewed coaching as teaching," she told The Harvard GAzette in 2016. "I believe it can be a very important part of your education -- like a non-traditional classroom."
Kathy Delaney-Smith, second from left. Photo credit: Harvard Athletics
I asked Delaney-Smith if she thought she would regret having retired once it was actually real.
"I bet you I will have the feeling because I'm a person who has loved her job so much," she said. "I am sure that's going to happen but I am not going to hang onto it. I am not going to worry about it, just stay in the moment."
Being "in the moment" is something she learned from studying meditation. She says it has been useful as a coach but also in life, helping her through childbirth -- she has a son -- and when she was battling breast cancer in 2000.
"Everyone wants to know what my plans are," she said. "I'm not a person who plans. I never have been. Why start now? I do think rest is in order. I've been doing this (pre-game) layup drill now for fifty-one years. That's a long time to be watching women do layups."
Onward, she goes to her second act. Or maybe third.
Cover photo credit: Harvard Athletics