After a recent victory, women’s basketball forward Fanni Szabo ’17 taught her teammates to say “believe in yourself” in Hungarian. Although injuries and illnesses have taken their toll on the women’s basketball team to the tune of a 2-12, 0-1 Ivy League record, Szabo, a Budapest native, consistently pushes her teammates to step up their game.
The humble and team-oriented Szabo has been the driving force behind Dartmouth’s offense. Szabo leads the team and the League with 17.6 points per game and scored over 30 points in three games, including Dartmouth’s only two wins so far. In her second career game, she scored 31 points, setting a new freshman scoring record in a 66-62 victory over the University of Vermont. She broke her own record 10 games later, with 34 points in Dartmouth’s 76-72 victory over the University of Massachusetts in the Blue Sky Classic. Szabo registered one more game of over 30 points when she scored 33 against Providence College in a 82-72 loss.
Dartmouth’s offense suffers when Szabo is shut down by the opposing team’s defense. When Syracuse University shut out Szabo for an entire game, the Orange won 88-47. The two other games where Szabo scored fewer than 10 points were against La Salle University and Hartford University, both Dartmouth losses by double digits. After each lackluster performance, however, Szabo has bounced back.
Teammate Lakin Roland ’16, a forward, said that Szabo plays smart.
“She leads by example,” she said. “She’s not one to criticize or be very vocal. When she is vocal, it’s more of a positive tone. I think the coaches appreciate her.”
Teammates and friends commented on Szabo’s humility and team-oriented attitude.
Calling her sincere and modest, Szabo’s floormate Ruby Hopkins ’17 said she had not been aware of Szabo’s success on the court until she heard about it from other people.
“When I congratulate her, she redirects the attention away from herself by saying nothing could have occurred without the team,” Hopkins said.
Szabo played various sports growing up in Budapest. As a child, she wanted to emulate her brother by playing tennis. The tennis coach told the six-year-old Szabo that she was too young and that she should return when she was older. She turned to basketball and gradually fell in love with the sport, the start of a path that eventually led her to Dartmouth.
While attending Britannica International School, a long-established British school in Hungary, Szabo was named the nation’s top student and top athlete in 2012 and received an award for academic excellence. She played three seasons with UNIQA Euroleasing Sopron, a Hungarian women’s basketball club, where she won the First League National Hungarian Championship and the Hungarian Cup. She finished second in the First League Hungarian-Slovakian Championship and was named to the U18 All-Tournament Team, among other honors.
Szabo said she chose Dartmouth over universities with stronger basketball programs due to the school’s strong academic record.
“From the first moment I decided to come to the U.S., I told myself that I would only come if both academic and athletics were a high priority,” Szabo said.
In high school she was restricted to studying four subjects, so Szabo, a planned psychology major, said she has enjoyed exploring other topics since arriving at the College.
“I love how I’m able to see my teammates every part of the day,” she said.
The team is positioned to improve thanks to Szabo and the leadership of first-year head coach Belle Koclanes. Despite its 2-12 record, the women’s basketball team has yet to give up.
Szabo says she sees that the team has improved and knows it can win.
“We work every day to make winning an Ivy Championship possible,” Szabo said. “Our record doesn’t show it because we’ve had a lot of sicknesses and injuries. Now, all of us are able to play and it’s going to make us a better and more consistent team.”
Szabo and the Big Green return to action on Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m., traveling to Newark, N.J., to take on the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the first match of a six-game road slate. Dartmouth’s next home game isn’t until Feb. 14, when the team will play Cornell University.
