Female Athlete of the Year Runner-Up: AnnMarie Healy

It’s hard to pinpoint the best moment of co-captain AnnMarie Healy’s season. Maybe it was the last second turnaround jump shot to take Princeton into overtime. Or perhaps it was 27 points against Columbia where she shot a record setting 13-of-14 from the field. Perhaps it’s the fact that she never failed to score in double-digits all season or maybe it was the 18 points she scored against Yale in what was the largest comeback in school history.

The list goes on, but suffice to say, Healy leaves Cambridge as one of the most dominant forwards to lace up at Lavietes.

While it’s difficult to pinpoint the best game of her season, perhaps the most memorable moment came in late February when Harvard matched up against Yale at home. After the Crimson ran up a lead as high as 14, a jumper from Yale senior Nyasha Sarju tied the game at 63 with just over 30 seconds on the clock.

What ensued might just be one of the best finishes the Harvard women’s basketball saw all year.

“Sydney [Skinner] just gave me an incredible pass,” Healy said. “I did miss the first one, but I grabbed the rebound and was able to put the second one in. I ran back not knowing I had even won the game.”

Healy’s shot fell right as the buzzer sounded and the Crimson walked away with the 65-63 win.

Beyond the dramatic finish, the victory kept Harvard in the race for the Ivy League title and extended a Crimson winning streak to five games. Healy finished the contest with 21 points, seven rebounds, and six assists.

“As a player you totally dream about those moments, but don’t necessarily expect that they would happen to you,” Healy said. “I was just at the right place at the time.”

In an up and down season that saw the Crimson drop five in a row at one point only to later win six consecutively, Healy was without a doubt the most consistent player on head coach Kathy Delaney-Smith’s squad. Healy finished the season averaging a team-high 16.1 points per game on just over 50 percent shooting from the field—marks good for second and third best in the Ivy League, respectively.

In a starting rotation that featured two freshmen and three seniors, Healy was by far the most experienced on the roster. With classmates Kit Metoyer and Shilpa Tummala both missing significant time during their first three seasons due to injury, Healy quickly became to go-to forward for coach Kathy Delaney-Smith on a squad that lacked height to begin with.

“She was never injured and [injuries] have been a huge problem for us,” Delaney-Smith said. “Some talented players missed some key developmental time, but not AnnMarie. It’s why she’s gotten better and better.”

Through her first two years, Healy saw limited time behind standout forwards Erin McDonnell ’15 and Temi Fagbenle ’15, but in her junior year she broke out for over 13 points a game, shooting at a 52 percent clip. With dominant post moves, Healy was a force to be reckoned with on offense. The upward trend continued into her senior year as she became one of the best inside finesse players in the league.

“We definitely needed AnnMarie,” junior forward Destiny Nunley said. “We lost a few of our forwards last year and [Delaney-Smith] was forced to move a lot of us to the four position, so we definitely needed AnnMarie to be a leader.”

Often drawing multiple defenders inside, Healy quickly became a threat inside both with her ability to finish through contact, or with the skill to find the open shooter on the perimeter. Healy finished her career with 964 points on 50.8 percent shooting from the field—the latter of which was good for sixth best all-time among Harvard players.

“She was basically unstoppable on the offensive end,” Delaney-Smith said. “She was certainly our go-to and even when our opponents knew she was our go-to they were not able to stop her very well. She’s just a very intense, very hard worker in games. Even when she was tired she fought through it and played like she wasn’t tired. She just had a tremendous senior year.”

—Staff writer Troy Boccelli can be reached at troy.boccelli@thecrimson.com.