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Harvard’s Allison Feaster ’98 changed Ivy League basketball, opening up possibilities that had only been dreamed of before. Yet her teammates and head coach Kathy Delaney-Smith emphasize what a modest, polite, soft-spoken individual she is; she, in turn, emphasizes that her success would not have come without her teammates.
And success there has been! As a freshman, Feaster averaged 17.0 points per game, led the League in rebounding, was selected for the All-Ivy first team, Basketball America’s All-Freshman team, and an honorable mention All-American, and was chosen unanimously as the Ivy League Rookie of the Year. In each of the next three years, Feaster was named to the All-Ivy first team and was selected the Ivy Player of the Year.
On graduation, Feaster had totaled 2,249 career points (the Ivy record) and 1,134 career rebounds, making her the first women’s basketball player in League history to reach the 2,000-point and 1,000-rebound plateaus. (The only other Ivy Leaguer in the 2,000-1,000 club is NBA Hall of Famer and former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Princeton ’65.) She led the Crimson to three Ivy League championships and its first three NCAA
tournament appearances, including the remarkable victory over Stanford in 1998 — making Harvard the first number 16 seed ever to oust a top seed in either the men’s or women’s tournament, and giving Ivy League women their first NCAA victory.
Feaster’s decision to come to Harvard was not an easy one. She grew up in Chester, South Carolina, the third of four children who lived with their mother after their parents separated. In seventh grade, when she had grown to 5-feet 9-inches tall, Feaster tried out for the high school varsity basketball team — and made it, breaking state records and winning numerous accolades through her six years of high school competition.
Yet her priority when she began to consider colleges was education, motivated largely by her mother, Sandra, who had returned to college to earn a degree while working two jobs to support her children. Both Duke and Rice offered Feaster full scholarships, and she was courted by Yale and Princeton as well as Harvard. She understood the financial implications of choosing the Ivy League, but believed the education she gained would create opportunities for her to pay back loans after graduation — and she did not want to be “tied down” by an athletic scholarship. “If you attend a scholarship school, they tell you what you have to major in, they tell you what you have to take as far as classes, you can’t work, you’re just not your own person,” she says. “I don’t think you have time to grow, and that’s what college is all about.”
A graduate in economics, Feaster plans to work eventually as a financial analyst and perhaps earn an M.B.A. But she put those plans on hold when she was drafted in the first round — the fifth overall selection — by the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA. While her mother is still her biggest role model, she also credits her college years for preparing her for whatever path she chooses. “I think Harvard,” she says, “has made it possible for me to do a lot of things.”
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