Ithaca’s Georgia Haverlock making DII impact

Georgia Haverlock was a standout player for the Ithaca High School girls basketball team before graduating in 2020 and is now finding success at the next level. She took her talents to Division II Roberts Wesleyan College, where she played in 17 games as a freshman in a pandemic-shortened season. Now through nine games as a sophomore, Haverlock has earned a starting role and leads the team in scoring with 13 points per game.

Haverlock refused to let the pandemic slow her down, making sure that she continued improving as a player during the offseason. She talked about what led to her impressive start as a sophomore.

“I’ll just say putting in extra time outside of practices, just getting extra shots up and just taking the advice that all my coaches give me,” she said. “I make sure that I’m constantly working on my weaknesses and just learning more about my teammates and learning how to play better with them.”

She’s had success on and off the court this season. Haverlock was recently named the Roberts Wesleyan Female Scholar-Athlete of the Month for achieving a 4.0 GPA in marketing in addition to her performance in basketball. She talked about how she’s balanced her school and basketball responsibilities.

“It all comes down to time management,” Haverlock said. “I make sure I prioritize my homework. I make sure that I do a little bit every single day and not wait until the last minute to do those things. But it definitely can be hard with traveling on the bus for a lot of hours and things like that. So, just getting ahead when I have extra time and not waiting to do things.”

Having to enter this level of basketball during a pandemic was not how Haverlock pictured it when she decided to pursue college basketball as a junior in Ithaca. She discussed how she and the Redhawks are navigating COVID-19.

“The pandemic is definitely not over, and it’s still impacting us,” Haverlock said. “I even had COVID earlier this year before the season began, so that was a setback. We’ve also just been losing players recently to COVID. It’s all about just fighting through it and doing what we can to protect ourselves from it. We’re just going to continue to practice and improve and just make sure that when we do have an opportunity to play that we are ready. We’re working through the setbacks.”

Haverlock has stayed ready throughout the season and had her best game last month, leading the Redhawks with a season-high 18 points in a 59-58 win over The College of Saint Rose on Dec. 10. With just eight seconds left in the game, Haverlock hit a pair of free throws to give Roberts Wesleyan the lead and the victory. She recalled her clutch performance.

“I was definitely nervous going into it,” Haverlock said. “But I had also just been having a really good free throw shooting night anyways. I knew I could make them, so I just took my time and just tried to stay calm and just make them. It was really exciting to get that win, especially with hitting those in the last few seconds.”

Haverlock had quite a few great games during her time with the Little Red, scoring over 30 points multiple times. Keeping up her performance at the Division II level has required improvement of her skillset across the board.

“I think that my jump shot and just my overall game has gotten a lot better,” she said. “I’ve improved my defense a tremendous amount. I think that, honestly, my decision-making and my overall IQ of the game has improved just playing with better players. You have to be able to read things a lot quicker and faster. Just playing at the higher level against more skilled players, you are able to develop and just become an overall better player.”

In the pandemic-shortened season, Haverlock and the Redhawks won the East Coast Conference (ECC) Championship and reached the third round of the NCAA DII Tournament. With that in mind, Haverlock gave her personal and team goals for this season and beyond.

“As a team goal, you obviously want to make it as far as you can in the playoffs,” she said. “We did win the ECC championship last year. Repeating that would be a tremendous goal for our team as a whole. But for me individually, I hope that, by my senior year, I can obtain the Player of the Year award. As a personal achievement, that’d be really cool to get.”

Roberts Wesleyan’s three-week winter break comes to an end on Wednesday, Jan. 5, against the College of Staten Island at home. With a successful first part of the season in the books, Haverlock looks to continue leading the Redhawks the rest of the way as they hunt for a second consecutive conference championship.

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