The seventh
Best of U. feature of 2009-10 is a story written by Lori Riley of the Hartford Courant about University of Hartford freshman women's basketball player Ruthanne Doherty.
Doherty, a biomedical
engineering major, entered college with a future career plan of traveling to
Sierra Leone, the home country of her father, to provide prosthetics to
natives who were left without limbs due a decade-long Civil War. Doherty also helped lead the Hawks to their first ever at-large
bid into the NCAA Tournament and the program's first national rankings, as high
as #19 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll. She earned a starting role with the
Hawks on December 21, the beginning of what was a school record 20-game win
streak for Hartford, who finished the 2010 America East regular season
undefeated for the first time in the history of Hartford women's basketball.
At the conclusion of a highly successful freshman campaign,
Doherty was fifth on the team in scoring, averaging 6.1 points-per-game, an
average she bettered in conference play (7.3 ppg, third on the team). Prior to
her entering the starting five, Doherty was averaging 4.3 ppg, and increased
that to 6.8 ppg in the remaining 22 games.
Doherty will play a major role for the Hawks in 2010-11 as
they lose arguably the program's best post combination of Diana Delva and Erica
Beverly. Delva leaves as the third leading scorer in school history, while
Beverly is the founder of the 1,000 point/1,000 rebounds club and is the
all-time leading rebounder and shot blocker in school history.
UHart's Doherty Aims To Help Dad's
Homeland
by Lori Riley, Hartford Courant ~ published Nov. 22,
2009
Long sleeve or short sleeve? The horrific question stuck
with Oludele Doherty long after he visited his home country of Sierra Leone.
The rebels who terrorized civilians during the country's
civil war - which lasted more than a decade and ended in 2002 - would ask that
before they raised their machetes to chop off the victim's arm. Long sleeve
meant the hand came off; short sleeve, above the elbow.
Tens of thousands were maimed, more than 70,000 killed.
Doherty visited his relatives, then returned home to his
family in Virginia. His daughter Ruthanne asked questions about the war. He
showed her pictures. She was horrified and moved.
"I was young and I didn't understand it," Ruthanne Doherty
said. "But as I got older, my dad would bring back pictures that showed little
kids without limbs. It touched my heart."
Ruthanne is a 5-foot-11 freshman forward for the University
of Hartford. She is averaging 4.7 points, 3.7 rebounds and 15 minutes in three
games.
She is also a biomechanical engineering major who plans to
go to Sierra Leone, where more than 60 percent of the population lives below
the poverty level, to work with prosthetics and help people get artificial
limbs.
She chose Hartford because it had a good basketball program
and her major.
"A lot of schools didn't have both," she said. "I didn't
want to go to a major school [as opposed to a mid-major]. I thought I would get
distracted. I wanted a close-knit community, to not get lost."
Her father, who owns an insurance agency in Richmond, Va.,
came from his home country in the early '70s to study criminal justice in
college in America. He met his wife Rebecca at Radford.
Their last name is pronounced "Do-watty" (they are not Irish
Dohertys, her father likes to joke). Ruthanne is the youngest of their three
children and the second to go into engineering. Her brother Oludele Jr. is
graduating from Norfolk State next month with a degree in optical engineering.
"It's unusual to have a female in engineering and then on
top of it, she's only the second engineering major we've ever recruited,"
Hartford coach Jen Rizzotti said. "It's not a very common major for kids coming
out of high school."
Ruthanne thought it would be stranger if she chose another
major after high school, considering she was enrolled in the engineering
academy at L.C. Bird High. She graduated as a member of the National Honor
Society and the second leading scorer (1,615 points) and leading rebounder
(1,083) in school history.
Oludele didn't understand the whole basketball thing at
first. He grew up playing soccer, but academics always came first. But
eventually, he came to accept that basketball was one of his daughter's loves
and that she could handle both. He was at the Louisville game Tuesday night,
when Hartford upset the Cardinals, last year's national finalists. He had a
good time.
His brother and his family are still in Sierra Leone, but
are trying to come to America. It's an 11-year process.
Oludele's younger brother died in the conflict.
"One feels so very, very powerless," Oludele said. "I get to
appreciate America more. There's so many things that one takes for granted. You
can agree to disagree here. Over there, you express your opinion, you're liable
to get killed."
He is proud of his daughter and her mission.
Why not? She's 18, smart and idealistic.
"It's going to be a long process," Ruthanne said. "But I'm
willing to dedicate myself to it."