Considering she stands at 6' 1", it should come as no surprise that nearly everyone looks up to the Big Green women's basketball star forward, Erin Rewalt '99.
Erin grew up as the youngest of three children and the only daughter in her family. And as evidenced by all of her athletic honors, Erin was the sibling who inherited the "jock genes" in her family.
"My brothers really aren't jock types," she said with a smile. "I'm even taller than they are, so I can usually beat them at any sport. In a lot of cases, my brothers and my parents were my support team rather than my teachers on the field."
Indeed, while her family has always stood by her side to provide support in all her athletic endeavors, Erin insists that her love for sports came at an early age when she always seemed to have a size advantage over her peers in the schoolyard.
"I've always loved being outside and playing sports," she said. "And I guess I've always been pretty good at whatever it is I'm playing, but a lot of that was just due to my height. It wasn't until high school that I started to take the simple games I played to another level of competitiveness."
In fact, high school was where Erin met a young basketball coach who would inspire her to always play hard and to love the game of basketball for fun's sake.
"My high school coach, Susan McAndrews, was a real inspiration for me," Rewalt said. "She was only 23 when she started coaching, but still she managed to bring the whole team together and turn the program completely around."
"Susan's top priority was on developing a team work ethic which created a special bond between the players," Rewalt said.
Ultimately, that "special bond" was just what Erin's team at Cardinal Mooney Catholic H.S. needed to become the giants of all basketball giants as they captured the Michigan state title in Erin's junior year.
Individually, Erin had an impressive junior year season which made her one of the nation's most sought after basketball recruits. But Erin insists that she couldn't have made it that far without the guidance of her coach. Today, McAndrews remains one of Erin's most influential role models.
For all her gifts thought, had it not been for one simple phone call from Dartmouth's hoops coaches, Erin might have never worn the Green and White.
"I knew I wanted go to the Ivy League," she said of her college plans. "At first, I only looked at Harvard and Yale, but then I got a call from Dartmouth."
"As bad as this might sound, I had never really heard of Dartmouth before that phone call. But once I came up to visit Hanover, I fell in love with this place," Rewalt said.
Since then, Erin has had no regrets about her choice to turn down the Crimson and the Elis in favor of the Big Green. And this satisfaction is well reciprocated by Erin to the rest of her team as well.
In her freshmen season, Erin nailed 45% of her field-goal attempts for a total of 142 points (7.1 ppg) and 127 rebounds in her first season. Not too shabby for a rookie.In her sophomore season, she turned the tables on any potential for a slump as she shot close to 50% from the field, grabbed 205 rebounds, snagged 32 steals and ultimately finished with 10.1 ppg.
With the poise of a four-year starter, Rewalt is becoming a coach's dream player -- she started off as a good player and now she's well on her way to transcending greatness. Which leads us to believe that her jersey number -- 23 -- has a little something to do with it.
And perhaps there's no greater testament to Erin's growing team influence than her mind-boggling 16-point second-half performance against the Yale Bulldogs this season that gave the Big Green a key victory.
Despite her dominance in the lane and her prowess under the boards, Rewalt remains modest about her game.
"It was just my turn to pickup the team that night like my other teammates did all season."
With five months until the next season, Rewalt is spending time just enjoying her sophomore summe like the rest of her classmates.. But she's also careful not to get too relaxed about the upcoming season. The way she sees it, there's still some unfinished business to take care of on the hardcourts before she graduates.
"Even though we've played well during these last two years, we still don't have the hardware to prove it," she said. "It's a real letdown to have never won the Ivy title, but I think that's in our cards."
Or in the words of her older hardcourt WNBA counterparts, one might say "we got next" -- Ivy title, that is.
