She found the campus picturesque, the weather spectacular, the coaching staff driven and the players receptive. In a word-Duke seemed almost perfect.
As her September visit to Durham drew to a close, Sheana Mosch, a USA Today preseason Super 25 honoree, sat at the gate of the Raleigh-Durham Airport waiting for her plane to depart. While her flight back to Pennsylvania was delayed several times, Mosch chatted with Duke coach Gail Goestenkors about her visit and her future.
When it finally came time for Mosch to board the plane, she turned to Goestenkors and decided to give her one final goodbye present: "I want to go to Duke."
The recently named 1999 Pennsylvania Player of the Year, who had been lured by hundreds of schools, took all of one official visit to decide where her heart and her jumper would belong for the next four years.
"During the visit, I felt like I wanted to commit," Mosch said. "I waited till the end. Duke's just such a great school-it's just perfect."
While Mosch may have found the perfect fit at Duke, her game would have found a home almost anywhere. The 5-10 guard brings athleticism, competitiveness and a knack for scoring that can only be described as explosive. In her career at DuBois Central Christian, Mosch poured in 3066 points.
This past season, Mosch put the finishing touches on her high school career by averaging more than 26 points, 15 rebounds, five assists and five steals.
"She's going to find a way to score," Goestenkors said. "She could penetrate, create her own shot. She just has a passion for the game of basketball. She's going to bring high intensity to our practices."
Mosch's passion, however, wasn't always basketball. Growing up, Mosch was more fond of the diamond than the hardwood. It wasn't until she was 13 that the Little League All-Star discovered a love for basketball. And after she found the game, it didn't take long before she excelled at it.
Within two years of beginning competitive basketball, Mosch joined the Philadelphia Belles, an elite AAU team where she played with current Blue Devil Krista Gingrich and another member of Duke's recruiting class, Michele Matyasosvky.
As the honors kept rolling in and her stock kept rising, college coaches quickly took notice of the scoring machine from tiny Clearfield, Pa. As the recruiting letters piled in, Mosch just kept on getting better. She earned All-State honors in 1998 and competed for her country in the 1998 World Youth Games.
"She's just a tremendous athlete," said her father and high school coach, George Mosch. "I think she's going to bring Duke a lot of versatility-she's got a great jump shot, good rebounding skills, some great ballhandling."
By the summer after her junior season, Mosch had narrowed her choice of colleges down to Duke, George Washington and Notre Dame. But all it took was one scenic detour on the way back from a family vacation in early August to trim that list down to one.
While driving back from "The happiest place on earth," Mosch and her family decided to take a slight detour through Durham and found a place that made them ever happier.
"I had it down to about three schools, and Duke was the only place I hadn't seen before," Mosch said. "So I wanted to see where I might be going. It was just a couple of hours, we walked around, saw all the main stuff. I loved the campus; I loved the weather, everything looked great."
Mosch's official visit to Duke one month later only confirmed what she knew all along: Duke was where she wanted to be. After seeing the campus and speaking with Goestenkors, her dad and her coach couldn't agree more.
"We absolutely love it there," George said. "[Goestenkors] is really the most dedicated coach I've met, and I've met a lot of them. I just think she's totally dedicated, and she just loves her girls. I couldn't be more thrilled that she's going to be Sheana's coach."
The only person who may be even more excited than her dad would be Sheana herself. When Mosch steps back on campus for the first time since she bid farewell to Goestenkors at the gate, she will not only join a team fresh off its first Final Four appearance, but should receive plenty of opportunities to dazzle as the team graduates six seniors.
"It brings a world of pride to me to be going to school [at Duke]," Mosch said. "I just want to contribute any way I can and try to get the team as far in the NCAAs as possible. Whatever is missing, I want to bring."
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