HOOP DREAMS
Plymouth Meeting resident Fox two-time national champ for Amherst
HATBORO » When it comes to Hannah Fox, there are two very important things to understand.
Fox, a rising junior at Amherst, likes to dream big and she does not like to be in a state of inactivity. The Penn Charter graduate and Plymouth Meeting resident is already a two-time Division III women’s basketball national champion, a standout lacrosse player and a dedicated student.
It’s why Fox, who isn’t a big believer in taking time off, is honing her game on the hardwood this summer in the Philadelphia/Suburban Women’s College Basketball summer league.
“If you’re passionate about something, you should put 100 percent behind it and make the most of it,” Fox said. “Will it always turn out how you want it? No, but that’s no reason not to try your hardest because there’s always something to learn and you’ll still get something out of it.”
At PC, Fox scored 1,813 points in basketball and went over 100 goals in lacrosse. On top of the two national titles she’s already won at Amherst, Fox was a part of the USA’s World Maccabiah Games gold medal women’s basketball team in 2017.
The funny thing is, Fox didn’t intend to play two sports at Amherst. A three-sport athlete at Penn Charter, where she also played soccer on top of hoops and lacrosse, the point guard/midfielder was only going to pursue basketball in college after signing with the NESCAC powerhouse. While basketball is her top passion, she is also a very good lacrosse player and even made the final cut for the United States U19 national team.
After she arrived on campus, Fox felt herself pulled back to lacrosse and decided to try and walk on while also staying committed to basketball. It was an ambitious endeavor, but the women’s lacrosse team was happy to have her and Fox said her coaches have been enormously supportive of her two sport pursuit.
“It was an interesting situation
coming in after the lacrosse season had started, being a new person who didn’t have the initial intention of playing lacrosse,” Fox said. “It worked out. My coaches have done a great job making sure I would be able to do that and I’m grateful for that.”
Fox also joked that her lacrosse teammates are a bit torn early in the season, cheering for her and the basketball team to keep advancing but also waiting for her to step out on the field with them once her winter season ends.
Once basketball practices begin in earnest, Fox really doesn’t get a break until her lacrosse season ends in the spring. This year, Amherst advanced to the national quarterfinals before losing to eventual national champ Gettysburg College, so Fox’s athletic year ended after her academic one.
Balancing two sports plus her academic pursuits takes some work, but Fox insists it’s “100 percent manageable” for her. Fox said there’s actually a lot of overlap in her two sports and in the cases where she may miss a lacrosse workout or activity for basketball or vice-versa, her coaches understand that she’s still in a gym or on a field doing something to improve her skills and ability.
The most important thing she’s found though, is because it’s what she wants to do, it’s easier to pull it off.
“I love doing it, even though I’m busy doing it all the time, it’s what I want to do and I’m happy doing it,” Fox said. “In my opinion, that’s a necessity. You have to love what you’re doing and I love the people I’m playing with in both sports and I love playing both sports. Playing basketball and lacrosse at Amherst, it’s something I love doing, so that makes it easy for me.”
On a basketball court, Fox doesn’t have one standout skill. Instead, she does a little bit of everything and does it all well. She’s a proficient shooter both in midrange and beyond the arc although the guard said one of the things she’s trying to work on in this summer league is getting by defenders and into the lane.
She rebounds well despite measuring just 5-foot7, has good hands defensively and throws the simple passes along with some with a bit more flair and a little bit of wizardry. She had a play in November of 2017 featuring a steal, a couple behind-the-back dribbles and ending with a spin move into a layup end up No. 5 on ESPNW’s Top 10 Plays for that week.
Amherst is 66-0 in her two seasons with Fox appearing in 62 of them. As a freshman, she appeared in 29 games but started just one while as a sophomore, the guard started all 33 games in the undefeated season. Fox said she was never surprised at her ability to thrive as an underclassman, but instead attributed it to a growing sense of self confidence.
“I came into the school that aligned with the goal our team had, which was to win the national championship and each one of our players and the coaching staff all had that mentality of doing whatever it took to get to that point,” Fox said. “My freshman year, I took in a lot, I learned about other teams due to our scouting reports and during our practices and realized what it would take from that sense. Being a part of our team, which ended up winning it all, going through that and learning from my teammates while also teaching them whatever I could, I knew I was going to put in whatever I could and had confidence my teammates would as well, so we motivated each other.
“I was excited because I knew what opportunity we had at hand and I wanted to make the most of it and our team did as well.”
For her career, Fox is averaging 8.3 points per game, 3.8 rebounds, 1.5 assists and 1.3 steals and had sophomore season averages of 11.6 ppg, 5.6 rpg, 2.0 apg and 1.8 steals per game while playing an average of 31.4 minutes a night. In 21 lacrosse games over two seasons, Fox has scored 28 goals with 18 assists for 46 total points.
Fox’s team this summer doesn’t feature any of her Amherst teammates and is a mash-up of Division III players from around the area. This fact does not bother the guard at all. Instead, she relishes the
chance to play with and against new players.
She’s known summer league teammate Emma Dorshimer (Jenkintown/ Gettysburg) since they were preschool age and she played with teammate Lauren Fortescue’s (Plymouth Whitemarsh/Salisbury) older sister Pattie but it’s been mostly new. While Fox admitted the team’s first few weeks together were “rocky,” her squad has developed quickly and is angling for a seed in the top half of the 10-team league’s upcoming playoff tournament.
“It’s less about the personnel and more of a freestyle basketball since we don’t have set plays,” Fox said. “We’re not really doing a set play every time down the floor so you’re relying more on your skill to score a lot of your points. If you have a play on your college team that will get you a wide-open three, you run that play like the back of your hand and know it gets you open shots where here, you have to create more for yourself but also the rest of your team.”
Fox said at Amherst, she’s more reliant on 3-point and midrange jump shooting to do a lot of her scoring so in summer league, she has put a focus on driving the ball and finding ways to shake defenders. With a myriad of guards and post players coming from Division I-III and numerous colleges, every game gives Fox different looks to try and work around.
“You can really take something away from each game,” the guard noted. “I find that to be very beneficial.”
Last Thursday, her team was scheduled to play in the 8:15 slate of games, but Fox rolled in a little before the first set at 7 p.m., hoping one of the other teams would be short-handed so she could jump in and get a little extra run in. She had to settle for some jumpers between quarters and at half of the first games, but the idea was very much what Fox is about.
“Some people like relaxing or taking some time off, I like being busy and doing things to stay active,” Fox said. “I don’t enjoy just sitting around. If someone calls and says ‘we’re going to the park to shoot,’ or ‘we’re going on a run,’ even if I already went and ran or shot, I’m still going to say yes.”