Emily Leer was not exactly enthusiastic about playing basketball as a youngster.
As a matter of fact, just the opposite was true.
“I was a very girly girl when I was younger, and my dad actually used to bribe me to come out and play basketball with him,” Leer recalled. “He would pay me to play.
“I used to be a Barbie girl. I played with my Barbies all the time.”
Not exactly the kind of beginning one would expect from one of the area’s premier basketball players.
“Times have changed since then,” Leer said. “I saw my sister (Liz) playing basketball, and I started playing for Fencor and made great friends I’ll have forever.
“Now I’m the one begging my dad to come on the court with me.”
Leer recently signed her name on a letter of intent to accept a basketball scholarship to Villanova University, and exchanging her Barbie dolls for a basketball was a wise decision indeed for the 6-2 power forward, who can do it all on the basketball court.
“She’s strong,” Abington coach Dan Marsh said. “She’s definitely one of the best defenders around, and she blocks a ton of shots.
“She can shoot the ball, she can handle the ball, she can pass the ball, and she involves her teammates. Pretty much she’s the best overall player I have coached. She will be playing some guard for us this year, and she’s one of the best post players around.”
It is Leer’s versatility that made her such a coveted recruit. The Abington senior is equally comfortable posting up her defender or coming off a screen and burying a three-pointer, and by the summer after her sophomore year, Leer already had scholarship offers on the table.
“It started with just the Philly teams – St. Joe’s, LaSalle and Drexel, and I was like - I have to get Villanova interested in me,” Leer said. “I started out thinking I was going to go local, and then as time progressed, I improved, and some of the bigger schools started looking at me.”
Several Big East schools entered the picture, including Villanova, and before the start of her junior high school season, Leer had received a scholarship offer from Villanova. Vanderbilt entered the picture a bit later and became an immediate frontrunner.
Thus began an interesting journey.
“At first they said, ‘People are saying we’re not going to be able to get you out of Philly. Tell us what you think about Vanderbilt,’” Leer said. “I gave them the whole spiel – ‘I am looking local, but you guys have a really developed basketball program and a really good academic school, and I would be interested.’
“We talked – they got to know me, and I got to know them.”
At the close of her junior season, Leer made the trip to Nashville, Tenn., to visit Vanderbilt.
“I really, really just loved the campus,” she said. “I loved the basketball program.”
Leer narrowed her choices down to Villanova and Vanderbilt.
“I really struggled for a long, long time because I felt there were pros and cons for both of them, and I wasn’t sure which had more pros than the other,” she said. “There was kind of pressure – not necessarily from the coaches, but I had started the recruiting process so early, and I felt I needed to pick my school before my junior summer.”
A dazzling performance by Leer at the Boo Williams Showcase in April brought some additional big-name programs on board, but the gifted senior never wavered.
“By that time it was like – what makes you stand out more than Vanderbilt and Villanova?” Leer said. “It really came down to Villanova and Vanderbilt.
“It was really, really difficult for me to pick because either way I was giving something up. Villanova was really close to home, which is something I always looked for, and Vanderbilt was ranked eighth in the nation at that time, so either way I was giving something up.”
Leer opted to give up the idea of playing close to home and made a verbal commitment to Vanderbilt in May.
“It was my dream to play at a school like Vanderbilt that had a chance of winning the (NCAA) tournament someday, and that overrode my fear of going far from home,” she said. “They knew I struggled with the distance, but they thought I was over that.
“I tried to convince myself that distance was not important, and the fact that my family was not going to be there wasn’t that important because I was going to get the whole basketball experience I’d always dreamed of.”
As time went on, Leer began to second guess her decision but was reluctant to let anyone know.
“I realized how important it as to be around my family and how much the little things mattered to me – like playing in the Big Five, playing local teams and playing against girls I’d played against my whole life and that kind of thing,” she said. “I have always felt super, super comfortable at Villanova.
“There was always a level of comfort that I felt with the coaches and players, and I never really got that same feeling at any other school. The first time I went there I said, ‘Mom, I feel like I fit perfectly.’ I always felt that way with Villanova whereas Vanderbilt would have been more of a risk.”
Eventually, after weeks and weeks of going over the situation in her head, Leer finally broached the subject with her mother.
“I didn’t make it seem so much that I was de-committing to Vanderbilt but rather more – I’m getting a little worried type of thing,” she said. “As time went on, I realized some of my wants and desires had changed, and I was able to view things differently.”
Leer discussed the situation with her parents, John and Anne Leer, as well as her AAU coach. Two weeks before the official signing period in November, she called Vanderbilt coach Melanie Balcomb.
“Calling coach Balcomb was extremely difficult because the Vanderbilt coaches had no idea about any of this,” she said. “She was very shocked, and I could tell she was upset. That was really hard. Just knowing I had disappointed people was really hard to take.”
Still, Leer knows she made the right decision.
On Wednesday night, she left practice at 5:30 and made the trip to Villanova to watch the Lady Wildcats down St. Joe’s 56-42.
“My family went with me,” she said. “I got there for their six o’clock game and was home before nine o’clock. It’s really nice.
“I’m excited to be part of the basketball program because I feel I can have a lot of impact there.”
Best of all, her family will be able to share the experience with her.
“My parents have supported me all throughout my career,” Leer said. “I played with my sister and go to all of her games I can make. I have a really, really close relationship with my mom, and it was just really hard to imagine only being able to see them once in a while and not really having them there to cheer me on.
“At Vanderbilt, they had tons and tons and tons of fans, but when you don’t know anybody in the stands it’s not as great. I’m just excited that they’ll be able to come to all my games and cheer me on.”
Leer is projected to play center at Villanova in coach Harry Peretta’s offense.
“His system is a lot different than other people’s systems, and it actually fits me pretty well because all the girls are pretty tall, and they can post up, they can drive and they can shoot threes,” Leer said. “Their center takes the ball outside all the time, and he runs an offense that is interchangeable for everyone, so I’m excited.”
***
Leer’s journey to Villanova actually began in earnest when she signed up to play for AAU basketball for Fencor.
“Once organized basketball started – I just loved it,” she said. “I really did.
“Going to nationals and playing against the best teams in the nation really inspires you to get better. We had some really good players come onto our team, including Chrstina Foggie who is going to Vanderbilt. Just having other girls come in who were really good made me want to work harder and get better.”
Hard work, according to Marsh, is something that comes naturally for Leer.
“Since the day I met her, Emily has gotten better every year,” the Ghosts’ coach said. “She works hard, and she’s become the player she is today because of her work ethic.
“She’s not the most gifted athlete. She doesn’t run like a gazelle, and when you see her, you might not say, ‘Wow, she’s a great athlete,’ but she’s the type of person who said, ‘I want to be a Division One basketball player,’ and she did what she had to do to get there.”
Leer listened as recruiters told her she wasn’t big enough to play post and opted to do something about it.
“I got the idea, ‘Alright, I’m not going to be 6-5 and be able to play center for UConn,’ so I kind of changed my game a little bit,” Leer said. “Instead of running to the block every time, I go outside. I can dribble and I can shoot.
“I worked on my versatility, and that really helped me get a lot of looks. That’s what really helped me become a better player.”
Leer is following in the footsteps of her older sister, Liz, who is playing basketball on a scholarship at American University, and she has carved out a nice niche of her own on the hardwood.
A first team all-league player as both a sophomore and junior, Leer earned a spot on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s all-area team last year - this despite missing almost half of the season with a partially torn MCL, an injury that was treated with rehab.
“That was really hard to deal with since I was going through the recruiting process,” she said. “It was a very stressful year.”
Leer still averaged 16 points, 10.2 rebounds and 3.4 blocked shots per game. In the Ghosts’ district playoff game against Chester, she had 13 blocked shots.
“If you tell Emily – this is what you need to do to get better, she’ll go out and do it,” Marsh said. “That’s why all the schools were after her because they saw her progression since she was a freshman.”
A progression that actually began when Leer’s father convinced her that playing basketball was more fun than playing with Barbie dolls.
“Once you get into it and you’re making your shots – I would stay out there, and we would work on my fouls shots,” she said. “If I made a certain number, I’d get ice cream or something, so I started to like it.
“It became more fun as I started playing.”
Leer is expecting to have a whole lot of fun in her final high school season.
“I’m excited to not have any stress like I did last year and just enjoy it,” she said. “I really hope that this year we will be a dominant team. I think we really can.
“Our work ethic this year has just been amazing, and I’m so proud of everyone on the team for going along with the new attitude of this year – work harder or don’t play.”
It’s an attitude that has paid dividends for Abington’s captain, and it’s an attitude Leer takes into the classroom where she has excelled as well. An honor roll student, Leer – who will be undeclared as a freshman – is a member of the National Honor Society.
In Leer, Villanova has not only inherited the consummate student-athlete but a reluctant basketball player who went on to become a star.
- Log in to post comments
0
