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EW YORK — The inside of Emily Engstler’s childhood home offers no immediate hints at her past accomplishments. Along the entryway of the 15-story complex overlooking the East River sits an indoor pool. Engstler, her parents, brother and sister did laps in the pool when it was open. Everything was a race for her. She’d swim. She’d box. She’d play ping pong. Everything had to be done at high speeds. She had to win.

In the kitchen of the 15th-floor apartment, a small replica Wheaties box with a young Engstler’s photo is perched on top of the refrigerator. It was taken in the third grade with her Christian Youth Organization basketball team before her name grew. Before she reached the heights of the shrine tucked away in her corner bedroom. Before she was Emily Engstler, one of the best Syracuse basketball recruits ever.

Engstler, now a freshman at Syracuse, has dominated the scene ever since she picked up a basketball at age three and started playing for her CYO team, Resurrection Academy, a grammar school in New York. She cruised there on boys’ teams. She lit up the AAU circuit. She imprinted her name on the street courts in Roosevelt Island, a small island on the east side of Manhattan. She won awards and gained recognition, including Gatorade Player of the Year in New York state, and was named a McDonald’s All American.

“She just loved playing ball,” Engstler’s father Billy said.

But even in her success, she had doubts. The boys were embarrassed to play with her in CYO because she was the best on the team. Her opponents didn’t want to lose to a girl. Her toughness was questioned. On the street courts, they wondered at first if Engstler could compete. In high school, local media put her as low as the fourth-best player in the city as rival player Jordan Nixon racked up accolades. Engstler executed moves perfectly in practice and still wondered if she could do them in a game.

She grew frustrated, and her tendency to speak her mind never helped. She stomped her feet at teammates’ mistakes. Don’t they see it? Didn’t they know to make a cut?

“No they didn’t,” her longtime AAU coach, Jess Villaplana said to her so often. “They don’t.”

She didn’t understand why her teammates couldn’t be at her level because she didn’t understand the level she was at.

There’s a sense among her longtime coaches, teammates, family members and friends that that’s still present today. There’s humility that downplays her past accomplishments and doubt that prevents her from thinking she can do more.

She was nicknamed “LeBronna James” by Hakeem Olajuwon’s daughter, “WNBA” by the players at the Blackwell Park street courts and “Em Baller” by her close friends. Her high school and AAU coach, Joe DeLuca, called her “the female version of Magic Johnson” because of her ability to play all five positions and make tough passes look easy. To all of this, she laughs.

“I think no matter what level you’re at … you still have to work on your game and every aspect because if not, it’ll get worse,” Engstler said. “You always want to be better.”

***

When Engstler first picked up a basketball, she immediately found her place. By the third grade, Engstler threw one-handed passes the length of the court and couldn’t escape the basketball craving. Two hour practices were followed by multiple hours playing outside.

As leaves peeled from the two large oak trees that stand in front of the blacktop, Engstler’s mother, Marilyn, often tracked her teenage daughter’s blonde hair from the balcony of their apartment.

“Emily!” Marilyn yelled.

Engstler looked around, confused, while also trying to ignore the voice.

“Emily! You got to eat!” Marilyn continued.

Engstler spotted Marilyn and held up her hand, waving her mother off.

“Alright. Ten minutes,” Engstler yelled back.

Engstler spent every free moment playing basketball in just a sweatshirt and shorts, even in the cold. When it snowed, she went to the local LA Fitness to play. It’s how she made many of her friends, young and old. Since she was 11, she hardly ever missed a noon Sunday game with the older guys, whose ages ranged from 18 to 50. Hunter Morris, who played streetball with Engstler at Blackwell, said most times when he arrived, Engstler had already been there for an hour. By age 13, she was one of the best players on every court that she played, so the frustration came easy when her teammates didn’t pass.

But Engstler didn’t care. When her teammates wouldn’t pass the ball, she took it herself. Though she played physical and, at a young age, often matched the other boys in strength, they made sure to remind her: “If you’re going to play with us, you can’t complain.”

“They were saying it because I was a girl,” Engstler said.

She put on a smile as young girls approached her, enthralled by her ability to hold her own against the boys. But later she shrugged off the sentiment. Her frustrations sometimes led her to pull herself from games. After every game, she could go on “forever,” Marilyn said, about the things that could have gone differently.

In eighth grade, she was playing for Queens Express, a team on the AAU circuit based in the New York City borough Queens, when she was encountered by DeLuca, who saw her make a pass with one hand off just two dribbles.

“Who is this kid?” he asked.

“That’s Emily Engstler. She’s coming here,” said Bob Mackey, who DeLuca was an assistant under at Christ the King (New York) High School.

Once at Christ the King, DeLuca saw little wrong with Engstler’s game. Her passes were crisp. She rebounded like a forward and took the ball from end to end like a guard. DeLuca noticed her frustrations and called it the “Emily face.” Engstler laughed at that, and her high school career got off to a scorching start. She was elevated to the varsity team as a freshman, the No. 1 team in the conference and played a steady role in her first 10 games of her varsity career, averaging 3.5 points, 5.2 rebounds and 2.7 assists. But between her youth and fixing her jump shot, which had a low, two-handed release, most within the program were optimistic for the years ahead.

Then, three weeks into Engstler’s sophomore year, DeLuca, working at his brother’s construction company at the time, got a call from Mackey, who was driving in his car home for the day.

“Hey, something happened with Em,” Mackey said.

DeLuca rose from his chair. “Alright, I’m coming in early today.”

***

Speaking out had gotten Engstler in trouble before, but by the beginning of her sophomore year at Christ the King, it reached its breaking point. While Engstler had an “amazing” experience with the team and her friends at the school, she didn’t have the best relationship with the principal, Marilyn said.

“I just didn’t think it was a friendly environment,” Engstler said.

Marilyn described four incidents that led to Engstler deciding to transfer from Christ the King. She mentioned minor things like talking in class, publicly asking for her phone back from the dean and arguing with a boy over a stolen seat as the buildup.

In the final occurrence, she remained in her seat to finish writing in class, which the substitute teacher that day reported to the principal as her not cooperating. Due to pressure from the school and the Engstlers’ growing distaste, Marilyn signed Engstler out of the school and opened Engstler up to a transfer.

“The choice was not based on basketball, but on academics,” Marilyn said in a text. “My only regret is that she did not transfer immediately after her freshman year.”

The incident shocked those who surrounded Engstler. She was a model kid, many close to her said, and the only player on her varsity basketball team on the honor roll. Those close to her thought the school was trying to make an example of an athlete. And a popular one, too.
Christ the King declined to comment on this story.

Engstler attended St. Francis Preparatory (New York) School, the alma mater of her AAU coach Jess Villaplana. Head coach Kerri White didn’t know of Engstler’s arrival until her first day at the school. Engstler sat out her sophomore year due to Catholic school transfer rules. AAU was her only outlet.

Her temper remained, though. One game, Engstler was sitting on the bench when Villaplana approached her.

“Slide down,” Villaplana remembered she said.

“There are plenty of seats at the end of the bench,” Engstler replied.

Villaplana scowled: “I don’t give a f*ck. The exit is right there. This is my team.”

Engstler immediately slid down and apologized to her coach after the game. Villaplana accepted, and it set the tone for the two’s relationship moving forward.

The pair converse about everything, and their relationship is a double-sided bond of player and coach and friend and friend.

Around the same time, Tammi Reiss, who was in her first year as an assistant at Syracuse, encountered Engstler late-night at a tournament during a recruiting trip. Engstler was dominating every facet of the game, and Reiss noticed.

“I got to have that kid,” she remembered she thought.

For a year before Reiss was permitted to call and offer Engstler a scholarship on Sept. 1, 2016, Reiss became a regular at Engstler’s AAU games.

They often exchanged head nods. She watched and studied how Villaplana dealt with Engstler.

Villaplana didn’t yell. She didn’t use force. She simply handed Engstler a water, allowed her to walk to the end of the bench and waited for Engstler to cool down. Villaplana stressed to Reiss you can’t connect with Engstler without getting to know her. She respects honesty, so that’s what Reiss was, and she tried to mirror the same things Villaplana did to communicate with Engstler. The relationship blossomed. Reiss views Engstler as her “daughter,” and Engstler texts her for advice in life and school.

In the two weeks following Engstler’s official visit to SU — the last days before her commitment day — Reiss couldn’t sleep. She had grown connected to Engstler, who brought her father and others to games, making it a family affair. On Engstler’s commitment day, Reiss sat on her couch expecting the call by 11 a.m. or noon. When it rang, she froze.

“Hey coach …” Engstler said. Reiss doubled over and put her hand on her face, sensing the lack of emotion in Engstler’s voice. She vowed she’d never get that attached to a player after a player she recruited for two years at Virginia chose to go elsewhere. When Engstler spoke, and Reiss felt the emotions rush over her, she realized she failed.

“I think I’m going to commit to Syracuse,” Engstler said. “I’m going to be an Orange woman.”

“I lost it,” Reiss laughed. She called her dad and told him the news first.

After her commitment, the accolades kept coming. Engstler was a nominee for the McDonald’s All American Game, but she doubted she’d get the honor, Villaplana said. She made ground on the street courts, where she was dubbed a legend. Morris was shocked at how well she handled the physicality — on the courts players take elbows to the neck and ribs. Some call it jail ball. He remembered a play three years ago where a guy named Lequan Francis, who had a reputation of yelling and mocking people on the court, guarded Engstler in the post. She backed him down and scored right over him.

In contrast to her outspoken ways, she turned around, put a finger over her mouth and hushed him.

At the McDonald’s ceremony, when it became clearer that Engstler would receive the honor, Engstler’s parents summoned Villaplana to the front row. Before it started, Engstler and Villaplana stared at each other.

“Who would’ve thought, Em?” Villaplana asked.

“Jess, you did. You always did,” Engstler said. “When I doubted, you always did.”

***

Now at Syracuse, Engstler has brought her streetball flare to the Orange. Several teammates are wowed by her spin move, despite its predictability at times. The same few referenced a behind-the-back pass she made at half court, straight to Gabrielle Cooper.

Engstler frequently plays pickup games with her teammates and other athletes. Maybe it’s unfair that Engstler and her teammates round up SU athletes to play with them, she mentioned. But she doesn’t care because they always win. They never have to leave the court.

Many at SU project her as a “program-changing” player. Associate head coach Vonn Read can’t remember Syracuse putting this much emphasis on one recruit since the Orange lured now-WNBA star Brittney Sykes.

But Engstler has the duty to represent where she came from and the important task of regularizing New York-based recruits at SU. She wants to start the movement.

This past July, Morris was heading out with a few friends, and he saw Engstler in a convenience store. He stopped and told everyone he was with he had to go inside and say hi to someone.

When he entered the store, he approached Engstler and gave her a big hug and congratulated her for all she had accomplished. She said it wasn’t a big deal, which he balked at. It was.

“I’m proud of you. Just keep doing your thing,” he said. “Do it do it for the island.”

She nodded, and Morris left the store. Then she set out to do it.

Cover photo by Josh Shub-Seltzer | Staff Photographer