Kathy Delaney-Smith rose from the high school ranks to enjoy immense success at the collegiate level, but perhaps a more lasting aspect of her legacy is her ability to form meaningful relationships with her players, even beyond their careers at Harvard. From her time at Westwood High School, Delaney-Smith has had a knack for building programs and connecting with a community on a level deeper than basketball.

Kathy Delaney, coach of the Westwood High School girls’ varsity basketball team, wasn’t happy.

Her team was trying to get into its locker room, which had been taken over by a visiting boys’ squad.

“Alright, girls,” Delaney said. “Get your stuff. We’re going in.”

With Delaney leading the pack, the girls walked in.

“We were like ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it! They’re going to be showering!’” Erin DiVincenzo ’87 said. “We marched into the locker room, and there were boys diving, getting out of the way. She was making a point that this is our space, and it’s ridiculous that we had to take a back seat just because of the boys.”

Three decades later, Delaney-Smith, now head coach of the Harvard women’s basketball squad, issued the same command.

Another school’s men’s team was occupying the court during her players’ practice time. Delaney-Smith wasn’t pleased. She proceeded to kick them off the court and out of the gym.

“All of us were like, ‘Oh my God!’” Elle Hagedorn ’13 said. “Kathy was as riled up after that as I’d seen her in my four years…. Even during the game she was still pissed off at being treated like that. That goes to show that that’s her personality.”

Thirty-four years after leaving the high school world, Delaney-Smith can now call herself the winningest coach in Ivy League women’s basketball history. In that span of time, her journey as both player and coach has mapped remarkably well onto that of Title IX.

When Delaney-Smith played for her high school team, women’s basketball wasn’t the game that we know today—six players took the court for each squad in a half-court contest.

In 1971, just four years after Delaney-Smith hung up her jersey, all this changed. Women’s basketball spanned a full court instead of just a half court, and the game became five-on-five, the way it remains to this day.

While the rules of the game may have changed in the intervening years, one thing has not. Delaney-Smith still has the same fire that drove her to coach six consecutive undefeated seasons at Westwood High.

‘I KNEW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT IT’

Delaney-Smith had never intended to coach on the hardwood. After graduating from Bridgewater State in 1971, Delaney-Smith sought out a job coaching swimming.

However, Westwood High was looking for a jack-of-all-trades—when she came to the athletic directors looking for a swimming job, they agreed but had an additional request: that she would coach the basketball team, as well.