To an athlete, not being able to play in the senior season is a worst fear. The agony and regret of sitting on the sideline while the rest of the team competes is something no coach wishes upon any player.
But redshirt senior forward Rita Kollo looks at her broken foot not as a setback, but a chance to learn more about the game she loves.
“It has been frustrating, but I love basketball too much to be caught up on my frustration and not be happy for the team,” Kollo said. “I still can use my hands, and as long as I can do that, I can dribble, I can shoot and I can keep on working on things.”
That may sound like a sunny covering to mask her unfortunate circumstance, but anyone who has made her acquaintance knows that’s just how Kollo is. She is always smiling, always laughing and never thinking about the negative.
“She is a person that never takes energy away from anything. She never hangs her head, and she’s never felt sorry for herself that this has happened to her,” Oregon head coach Bev Smith said. “It’s a very tragic thing to not be able to play in your senior season, but she has never, ever stopped. If you see her on the floor, she is working as hard as she can so she will be ready to help us when she is able to play.”
That becomes evident after talking with her. Before practice on Tuesday, Kollo had two bottles of Propel in her hands and as soon as the men’s team left the court, she was out at center court with a ball, limping and dribbling in her protective boot.
Kollo’s bright disposition transfers to other things as well. When talking about her friends and family back in Budapest, Hungary, she smiles and fondly talks about how beautiful the country’s capital city is.
“Budapest is very, very pretty,” Kollo said. “Everyone should go there to visit. I left right after I graduated, but it’s a great place.”
Kollo’s journey from halfway across the globe led her to Colby Community College in Kansas, where she averaged 20.4 points over two years and was an All-American in 2006. From there she transferred to Oklahoma State, but after only one season Kollo decided that the fit wasn’t right and she decided to move out west to Eugene.
“A player realizes after a while whether or not there’s a place for her, and whether or not the coaches and her are on the same page,” Kollo said. “I didn’t feel I was with them. I have a lot of respect for the coaches at Oklahoma State, and I don’t hold anything against them, but we just had different ideas.”
The fit here at the University has been everything Kollo has hoped for. She said the international friendliness Oregon displayed was a big reason for her coming here, and she loves Oregon.
But after redshirting last year, this was supposed to be the year Kollo would take on a leadership role for the young team. She’s the lone senior and her experience was supposed to calm down an inexperienced group. It turns out she still has, it just hasn’t been with her play – it’s been with her words.
“The injury has taught me patience, and that there are things in life that you can’t control, and not to get caught up on things you can’t change but instead look at what you can do to get back,” Kollo said. “I tell everyone that even if they get frustrated don’t spend too much time on that. Try to improve yourself. Look at the basketball part instead of the emotional part.”
“She’s done everything that she can other than being out there with us,” junior guard Taylor Lilley said. “Mentally and emotionally she has always been there for us, and we always see her on the sideline working her butt off. Vocally she has still been a leader.”
Kollo even says her time on the sidelines has helped her improve herself in the mental part of the game.
“It’s kind of like a view from the coach. I see what they’re talking about, and I’m getting smarter, even if I can’t do those things right now,” she said.
The time is quickly approaching, however, when Kollo can apply all that she’s learned on the sidelines to her time on the court. Coach Smith and Kollo are both optimistic that she will be ready in time for the second half of the Pacific-10 Conference season, possibly as soon as Feb. 12, when the Ducks host Washington State. But until the time when she actually suits up and plays, the optimism is being tempered.
“It depends on her X-ray. If it were up to me, she would be out here right now,” Smith said. “But we just have to wait and see.”
So Kollo will continue to smile, laugh and cheer on her team from her seat at the end of the Oregon bench. She’ll be the first to offer words of encouragement and the last to say something negative. It may be sad that she’s missed most of her senior season, but she says don’t feel sorry for her; she’ll be just fine.
“It is what it is,” she says. “You can’t get upset, you just have to keep on working hard and staying positive.”
[email protected]
Despite injury, Kollo learns to find positives
Daily Emerald
January 22, 2009
More to Discover