Kathy Delaney-Smith: A Champion in Every Sense of the Word

Strong women:
Know them.
Be them.
Raise them.

-Anonymous

Many words have been written about Kathy Delaney-Smith’s 40-year tenure at the helm of Harvard’s women’s basketball program, but none may more fittingly describe it. While some might argue that her greatest achievement is the truly historic upset of a No.1-seed in the 1998 NCAA Basketball Tournament, that victory pales in comparison with what she has accomplished as a fierce leader, advocate, and mentor for generations of Harvard women.

“Kathy has played so many different roles for so many women. I look at her as so much more than a coach, because she treated all of us as so much more than players,” said Megan Song ’98, a member of that fabled team and subsequently a Harvard admissions officer. “She's a mentor, a sounding board. She’s tough, motivating, honest, optimistic, hilarious, and genuine. She does it all with such grace, dignity, fun and humor. I just feel so lucky to have her in my life, and to call her my friend now.”

A native of nearby Newton, Mass., when the Harvard job opened in 1982, Delaney-Smith was invited to interview and almost declined. “My family were Boston College people—my dad was a law professor there. There was this rivalry, so I had this negative impression about Harvard,” Delaney-Smith said. “I loved my high school job and was happy with what I was doing. But then someone said, ‘Kathy, even if you’re not interested in being a college coach, you just need to go through the process of an interview,’ and that made sense to me. The day before, I whipped up a pathetic resume with the help of a friend.”

“At that time, the search committee had deans, several administrators, and two players from the team—it was a table of 10 or 11 people at the interview,” Delaney-Smith said. “I really loved this place that day. There's an energy and a feeling to this place—it's a combination of the people and the beauty of Harvard. And I found myself being disappointed that I didn't try harder to get the job, because I then found myself really wanting the job.”

Marlyn McGrath ’70, herself a Harvard legend who was the College’s Director of Admissions for 34 years until her retirement in June 2021, remembers serving on the committee that ended up hiring Delaney-Smith. “At the interview, when asked some question about teaching technique, Kathy said she would prefer to show, not just to tell,” McGrath said. “And she asked for a ball, which was eventually produced. She demonstrated while everyone was completely bemused.” 

“After that we talked entirely about teaching — and pretty quickly moved on to the role of the coach in helping athletes grow up,” McGrath said. “Like our very best coaches, Kathy is an exceptional educator. In the context of sport—discipline, fair play, courage, persistence, teamwork, preparation, personal accountability— both techniques and values are conveyed, many of the essential qualities for ‘success’ in life. Kathy has an unsurpassed record as an educator of women.”

After Delaney-Smith came on board, she never looked elsewhere. She had lucrative offers from other schools over the years, but never accepted an interview. “I loved here,” she said.

A standout athlete, young Kathy Delaney was the first girl in Massachusetts history to score 1,000 points in high school basketball, coached by her mother, Margaret Hagen Delaney at Sacred Heart in Newton. Delaney-Smith went on to become a standout high school coach herself—leading Westwood (Mass.) High School to six undefeated regular seasons before coming to Harvard—but she had to fight for gender equity from the beginning, a calling she would pursue fiercely throughout her career.

“When I went into a high school system as a coach, I was shocked by what second-class citizens women and girls were. I wasn't raised in a family that way,” Delaney-Smith said. “I filed lawsuits, and I saw things change immediately—we got budgets, we got gym time. It wasn't perfect, but it was dramatically different, so there were inroads made.”

Delaney-Smith learned courage at home. Margaret Hagen Delaney, described by her daughter as “my mentor and my biggest fan,” raised six children and coached their teams growing up, while working three jobs. "What a miracle worker, what a pioneer, what an incredibly strong woman she was,” Delaney-Smith said. “She was fighting for girls in the ‘50s and ‘60s, in our little parish—for AAU basketball, and gym time, and uniforms. She was clearly a woman ahead of her time.”

Delaney-Smith’s “time” poetically coincided with the Title IX era. “Title IX is the launch pad,” she said. “I started my professional career in 1971, the same year that Title IX was proposed, so I guess we were just holding hands together all along the way.” On that path, she also inspired both the student-athletes and the coaches around her.

Katey Stone, the Landry Family Head Coach for Harvard Women’s Ice Hockey and head coach of the 2014 U.S. Olympic team, met Delaney-Smith in 1994 when she arrived on campus to lead the women’s hockey program, as a 28-year-old. “When I got here, Kathy had already been here 12 years, so I became a sponge—always showing up to her office,” Stone remembered. “She really helped me navigate Harvard early on and taught me to fight the right battles at the right time.”

Lindsay Miller ’08 played for Delaney-Smith and then spent five years as an assistant coach on her staff. She remembered arriving at an opponent’s gym for a road game, and their men’s basketball practice was running late, precluding the Harvard women’s team from taking the court for their assigned pre-game warm-up. No one in the building did anything about it, until Delaney-Smith walked up to the men’s basketball coach, registered her objection, and noted how disrespectful it was to the women and their impending game. 

“I know how much she's willing to stand up and fight the fight for equality for men's and women's sports,” Miller recalled. “But it was amazing to see it unfold live—for her to step up to that moment and say that the women’s game matters too, to know that it matters for her team to see her say that to the men. At first, I felt a little uncomfortable, but it was also so cool to see. This is why she has the respect that she does, and she's achieved everything she has—because she doesn't shy away from those moments.”

Always a warrior, Delaney-Smith faced a serious foe in December 1999, when she was diagnosed with stage-two breast cancer. She missed neither a practice nor a game as she went through surgery and treatment, and became a vocal advocate for breast cancer awareness. When she gave birth to her son Jared in November 1986, she didn’t miss a practice or a game then either. Delaney-Smith didn’t miss many days of work in her 40 years at Harvard, and her teams have reaped the rewards.

In addition to 11 Ivy League Championships, Delaney-Smith has more victories than any head coach in the history of the Ivy League—of either gender, in any sport. And, as much as she fervidly wanted to win basketball games, she always kept her eye on the bigger picture.

The result of Delaney-Smith’s dedication can be seen in the fruit that continues to grow on her tree. The four decades of women who played for her are both a very tightknit community and a highly successful group. They are now serving at the highest levels of government, business, healthcare, journalism, entertainment, and sport. They are also moms, and coaches of their daughters’—and sons’—rec-league teams.

“As an adult, you realize the importance of having women coaches, especially in youth programs,” Song said. “She's part of the reason that I helped coach my younger son in a weekend basketball league.”

Delaney-Smith’s alumnae weekends are legendary, and annually draw 50–70 former players back to campus. “The alumnae community is tied together by Kathy, because everyone's been coached by her, and shares the same connection,” Miller said. “There is always a genuine interest in the current team, and once those players graduate, they're already known and welcomed as alumnae.”

On February 12, over 80 former players returned for the final reunion of the Delaney-Smith era, to honor their coach on KDS Day, despite the complications of the COVID era. “That blew me away,” said Delaney-Smith, who described the day as one of the most memorable of her career.

In 2019, her alumnae endowed the women’s basketball head coach position at Harvard to honor their coach. The next coach, and each to follow, will be named The Kathy Delaney-Smith Head Coach for Harvard Women’s Basketball. “I have the little sign outside my office, and I get teary-eyed when I think about it,” Delaney-Smith said. “Words are so inadequate—it just means the world to me.”

“Another former player tweeted that it's immeasurable how many lives Kathy has impacted in such a positive way,” Miller said. “She makes you want to be a better version of yourself because she believes in you. The ups and the downs will come, and she just shows up in a way that you can rely on. That type of consistency and love is really hard to measure. We all know how much she's meant.... The hole will be big.”