They both said Delaney-Smith helped them understand the need to be more vocal on the court.

“It was a little different, because she’s been on the opposite side on the bench and on the court,” Wecker said of having Delaney-Smith as a coach. “I really did not know what kind of coach she was like when we played [Harvard]. I could tell that her players liked her, but I didn’t really experience that firsthand until this summer.”

Both Wecker and Ohlde said that getting to know Delaney-Smith off the court was “enjoyable.” The players had plenty of time to bond with each other and the coaches during their expeditions through the mountains of war-torn Croatia and to the Adriatic Sea resorts in the southern part of the country.

Ohlde teased Delaney-Smith for having said “Mexican 911” instead of “Rescue 911” (“Sorry, Coach”) and Wecker recalled Delaney-Smith jumping into the water on a boat tour to start a synchronized swimming class.

Such abilities did not go unnoticed by other members of the coaching staff.

“It’s very lucky for Ester Williams that Kathy did not continue to purse her synchronized swimming career,” Foster laughed.

But Delaney-Smith wasn’t always quite so graceful in her activities away from basketball. She broke her arm diving for a drop shot during one tennis match and spent the rest of the time with her hand in a removable cast after the orthopedic surgeon with the USA team advised against having a cast set there.

“I spent the whole 15 days with my hand in this light little portable thing, swollen, and I had to keep it up so it wouldn’t swell,” Delaney-Smith said. “I looked like an absolute idiot, actually. But it’s good humor. You need humor.”

Her ability to see the funny side of her injury speaks to her grounded nature that Foster finds “refreshing.” He complimented her all-out effort on the tennis court in the same way.

“It’s refreshing to have a coach that’s willing to get on the ground to save a point,” Foster said.

Aside from that fall, Delaney-Smith and the U.S. team were rarely tripped up during their time in Croatia. The one loss came against Brazil during the preliminary rounds and was avenged in the championship game, which the U.S. won 71-55.

Thirty-eight hours of travel later, Delaney-Smith was back on her home turf as Harvard’s coach. When considering which players from the summer she might see in the future, she mused that Pondexter’s and Whalen’s teams could stand between the Crimson and the Elite Eight.

“I’m sure we’ll meet several of them on that journey,” Delaney-Smith said. “Let’s just say that if that even happened, the basketball world would go into shock.”

Well, getting that far in the tournament would be a magical ride—and she has already survived the shocks of the Croatia trip.

It is a whole new world after all.

—Staff writer Brenda E. Lee can be reached at belee@fas.harvard.edu.