“When she was 13 and first started here,” Harder says, “most people could count maybe 20 13-year-olds who were clearly better than she was—not my words. [But] I watched her drive and knew that anyone better than her as an eighth grader would have to seriously challenge themselves to be better as a senior.”
Dempsey’s progress not only caught the attention of her coach, but Team USA evaluators as well. After attending several national team development camps, Dempsey was selected to the United States U-18 squad, which took gold at the 2009 World Championships in Germany.
“Singing the national anthem on the blue line,” Dempsey recalls. “It was a dream.”
Dempsey’s ultimate goal is to make the U.S. Olympic team, but for now she’s living another, older dream: playing for Harvard.
While the Crimson is by no means rebuilding and expects to remain among the nation’s top squads this season, some aspects of Dempsey’s situation at Harvard reflect her early days at Rivers. Since the Crimson has graduated its top three scorers (Sarah Vaillancourt ’08-’09, Jenny Brine ’09, and Sarah Wilson ’09), it will be looking to its freshmen—especially Dempsey—to make an immediate impact.
“[The freshmen] are going to get opportunities right off the bat that other kids have not had in the past because of numbers or elite players being in the program,” Crimson coach Katey Stone says.
Stone says that for Dempsey, the key is “for her to just kind of get herself comfortable and realize, ‘Hey, I can do this.’”
Dempsey’s early showing against McGill, and the confidence of her coach and teammates, seem to indicate that she’ll be up to the task. But while she’s poised to contribute right away, her success at Harvard will still be determined by her ever-present desire to improve.
“She’s always looking to get better,” Crimson co-captain Cori Bassett says. “We make fun of her a little bit for asking so many questions, but it’s just because she’s constantly looking for ways to get better and to challenge herself.”
It’s an approach that Dempsey has employed from Day 1, and because of it, she’s living the dream—or at least one of them. But there are others, and precedent indicates that whatever Jillian Dempsey dreams up seems to come true.
“She is a very talented player, but because of how hard she works, neither Harvard nor anyone else has seen the best that she is going to be,” Harder says. “She’s starting off at a very high level, but I would not count this player out for anything in the world. She can do whatever she wants.”
—Staff writer Loren Amor can be reached at lamor@fas.harvard.edu.