North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: Freshman Kastanek Energizes Pack Women
11/13/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
RALEIGH, NC – Has new NC State women's basketball coach Kellie Harper found a mini-me? Quite possibly, in guard Marissa Kastanek, the only freshman on the Wolfpack's roster.
For Halloween last week, Kastanek borrowed the coach's vintage No. 14 jersey and went out dressed up as Kellie Jolly, the Tennessee point guard from 1995-99 who led the Lady Volunteers to an unprecedented three consecutive NCAA Championships. Not exactly scary, Harper hopes, but wholly appropriate.
"Jon [Harper, NC State's volunteer coach and Harper's husband] has reminded me on several occasions that Marissa and I think alike," Harper says. "He tells me all the time 'pretend like you are coaching yourself.'"
Like Harper, Kastanek has brought new life and energy to a program that has been through so much over the last five years as Hall of Fame coach Kay Yow courageously fought through the final stages of breast cancer, which ultimately claimed the coach's life last January. Kastanek will likely be in the starting lineup tonight when Harper makes her Wolfpack coaching debut, in the 2009-10 season-opener against Florida International. Game time is slated for 8 p.m. at Reynolds Coliseum.
Kastanek, a 5-9 scorer from Lincoln, Neb., was recruited by Yow and the previous coaching staff since she was a high school freshman and long ago declared her intentions to play for the Wolfpack. She wavered a bit when Harper was named head coach, but Harper visited her twice immediately after taking the job and the two struck up an immediate friendship.
It didn't take long for Harper to recognize that Kastanek would be successful in the program she wants to build here.
"When I met her and talked to her, I knew she was the kind of player that I would have recruited 100 times out of 100," Harper says. "That was without even seeing her play. She is a winner. I knew she would work hard when she got here and I knew she would find success."
Kastanek scored 1,544 points during her high school career and helped Southeast High School win the Nebraska Class A state championship as a junior.
She fell in love with NC State when she visited Raleigh for the first time during the summer before her freshman year in high school, when her sister Allie played in an AAU tournament at Reynolds Coliseum. She had long dreamed of playing soccer at North Carolina, and had a closet full of baby-blue clothes. But that goal changed after she visited NC State.
"I wanted to play basketball in the ACC," Kastanek said. "I didn't know a lot about Coach Yow, but learned about her quickly. I will never forget when I got my first recruiting letter from NC State. I was so excited, I had to leave class."
She committed to the program not long after her first unofficial visit here, between her sophomore and junior years in high school.
Then, on Jan. 24 of this year, Kastanek began getting text messages from Raleigh, telling her about Coach Yow's death. That same night, her team played at Papillon-La Vista High, which was hosting a pink-out to raise money for breast cancer research and for awareness. There was a moment of silence before the game, and Kastanek went out and scored 18 of her game-high 22 points in the first half, easily leading her top-ranked team to a 58-33 victory.
"It was really emotional for me," Kastanek said. "It was one of the best games I ever played. I just wanted to go out and do something special for Coach Yow."
Kastanek describes herself as a natural-born leader, someone who is not shy about asking questions and has the ability to quickly grasp basketball tactics. That's one of the reasons she has earned a spot in the Wolfpack's starting lineup with seniors Nikitta Gartrell and Lucy Ellison, junior Amber White and sophomore Bonae Holston.
"Marissa does not look like a freshman, she does not act like a freshman, she does not play like a freshman," Harper says. "She has an amazing work ethic. She is a gym rat. She understands the game.
" She's fun to coach."
Kastanek developed her work ethic on her father's 800-acre farm in Crete, Neb. Her father and grandfather did the hard-core farming duties, but she, her two sisters and younger brother had chores that included feeding the family's two dozen cattle, mowing the grass, picking up debris following violent midwestern storms and making sure their dad and grandfather were well-hydrated on the tractor.
Her family moved to Lincoln for her final two years of high school, which created a bit of a dustup with the Nebraska Athletics Activities Association, which forced Kastanek to play junior varsity for 13 games of her junior year. She played the final 14 games with the varsity, and led Southeast to the state title. The team returned to the title game earlier this year, but lost its bid for back-to-back championships.
Her experiences have given her confidence in her abilities, as a player and as a freshman. She has no qualms about being a leader on a team that has four seniors and a fourth-year junior.
"Technically, everyone on this team is a freshman: the coaches, the returning players, all the way down to me," Kastanek says. "Everything is so new to everybody. We have great senior leadership, but it is very different than senior leadership on a team that is established. It keeps us together and tells us 'this is what you have to do to be successful in the ACC. We may not know exactly how Kellie wants to do it, but this is what you have to do to be successful against Duke or Carolina.'
"We all have the abilities to be leaders."
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
