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For the first time in a long time, Molly Moffitt knows what’s coming next.
As she neared graduation from her Seattle high school last June, the only thing she knew was that she was getting on a plane for Ireland a few days later to try out of the national U19 team. Even that was only decided a few days before. But college? Prep school? Play a sport? And which one? Basketball? Lacrosse? Moffitt was one who really felt the fallout of the havoc COVID wrecked on high school student-athletes.
But now Moffitt, who just finished a postgrad year at Putnam Science Academy, knows where and what she is going to do.
The 6-foot, 1-inch wing announced last week that she was accepting a scholarship offer to play basketball next year at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.
“It’s sometimes hard for me to settle down and take a break. I’ve always been on go-mode, especially these past few years, so it’s kind of an interesting feeling to relax a little bit,” she said last week. “I haven’t known what I was going to do so it’s really cool to know that I found a great place and I’m going to grow and get a great experience. It’s a relief for sure but I’m ready to get going.”
Moffitt was one of the top players for the Mustangs’ Prep Black team, which advanced to the Final Four of the Independent Schools National Tournament, averaging around 12 points and eight rebounds a game as a skilled wing who could operate with equal effectiveness inside or out. But she didn’t even know what prep schools were until the end of her senior year and didn’t commit to her PG year at PSA until she was in Ireland. She said if she hadn’t gone to PSA, she was thinking about walking on to lacrosse or basketball teams at whatever school she went to, most likely at the junior college or NAIA level.
And now she’s a Division I scholarship athlete. And once UAB offered her in late January, she had a feeling that was where she’d end up. It has a top-15 nursing program, which is what she wants to get into, and its athletic programs are on the come up, she said.
“When I got my offer from UAB, I was over-the-moon happy,” said Moffitt, who admitted she was thinking about UAB a lot while on an official visit to another school. “I loved talking to their coaches and building a relationship with them.
“UAB is in a city but has a college-town feel, which I really liked. Stepping on campus and watching them play Southern Miss, I started tearing up a little bit. I don’t know why, but I guess it’s because I just kind of knew. I was watching them play and seeing everything in action. I was seeing coach (Randy) Norton coach and seeing (associate head coach) Taryn Martin coach, and I just knew, ‘Yeah, this is where I want to be.’”
She actually took that visit by herself, which was atypical.
“It was empowering making that decision for myself,” she said. “Not that they had a huge influence over it, but I was there with the coaching staff in the morning, just talking to them. I was just by myself, which was fine but usually having my parents there, they can act as a buffer and ask some of the questions that I wasn’t really thinking of. But I feel like I did a really good job communicating with them and with the girls. I made the decision by myself.”
She said Norton’s program is family-oriented; the fact that all of his assistant coaches once played for him speaks to that. She said he also reminded her of her dad, and since she is so close with her family, there was a real level of comfort there.
And one of the first people she called after making her decision was her grandma.
“I call her every Sunday and we just talk,” Moffitt said. “She’s the coolest person ever. She was reminding me, ‘You’ve been raving about UAB ever since you got the offer.’ She knows me. She just put everything in perspective for me. She was like, ‘Just give it a shot. You can always come home. You have family that’s going to support you whatever you do. Just give it a shot.’”
And that’s how Molly Moffitt knew what was coming next for her.
Stephen Nalbandian
Sports Information Director
Putnam Science Academy
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