Athlete of the Week: Melissa Johnson `00

Melissa Johnson has come a long way in the last few years--716.9 miles, to be exact.

That's the distance she traveled when she transferred from North Carolina to Harvard in 1998, a little more than a year after she and her Tar Heel team had beaten Harvard 78-53 in the first round of the 1997 NCAA tournament.

Academically a senior, she is considered a junior on the basketball court because she is trying to gain the year of eligibility she lost in sitting out last season under NCAA transfer rules.

Although she turned Harvard down as a high school senior, Cambridge Crimson is beginning to look better on Johnson than Carolina Blue did.

This past weekend, in helping the Crimson grab the Harvard Invitational title, Johnson, a 6'5 center, dominated over smaller teams from Ohio State and Sacred Heart.

Friday, in the upset over Ohio State, she scored 18 points and grabbed nine rebounds.

It was in Sunday's game against Sacred Heart, however, that she really made her mark.

Owning both the paint and the boards, Johnson could have built a fence. She grabbed 18 rebounds and poured in 16 points. Her 18 rebounds tied her for sixth on the Harvard all-time single-game rebound list.

As an added bonus, two close friends of hers--world champion sprinter Marion Jones and her husband, world champion shot-putter C.J. Hunter--were in the stands on Sunday to see the display. Johnson and Jones were teammates on the UNC basketball team.

One of Johnson's current teammates is her sister Sarah, a 6'4 freshman center who often rotates in for Melissa.

But perhaps Johnson's performance can be seen most fittingly as a tribute to Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, who, with the win Sunday, got her 250th career victory. It was Delaney-Smith who initially recruited Johnson, lost her to UNC and ultimately got her back.

Now that's something to be thankful for.