STANFORD, Calif. — Alanna Smith had left for her flight from Australia to join Stanford’s basketball team, so she never saw her mother’s tears.
“It was the hardest for my mom to let me go,” Smith recalled of their emotional goodbye almost three months ago. “But it’s been a goal of mine for quite a while now. My uncle went to college in California, and it’s been stuck in my head that I wanted to go to college here.”
Smith unintentionally made history the moment she stepped on campus. She is the first international recruit for the Cardinal women’s program, which has had talented squads in recent decades under the guidance of the Hall of Fame coach Tara VanDerveer.