Dori Gyori's 12 points in Wednesday's impressive Messiah victory at seventh-ranked Lebanon Valley belie how difficult her night could have been. Gyori was held without a field goal in the first half as the Falcons trailed LVC throughout the half.
Not surprisingly, to anyone who has followed Gyori's career, she overcame that difficulty by scoring 10 points in the second half, including six early on as Messiah quickly got back into the game.
It was a microcosm of the past five years for Gyori – she thrived without the benefit of doing anything the easy way. Gyori left her family and her native Hungary as a high school exchange student, dreaming of a basketball scholarship at a Division I college. She knew Messiah coach Mike Miller and his daughter, Taylor, now a junior and the Falcons' starting point guard, through a family connection and had attended Mike Miller's summer camp while in eighth grade. She and Taylor started an e-mail friendship. Four years later she played alongside Taylor as an exchange student at Mechanicsburg.
The Millers figured that would be the last time they would team with Gyori. Mike Miller knew how good she was and tried to help her fulfill her Division I goals.
"International players don't come to the United States to pay for college," Miller said. "We worked really hard to get her a Division I scholarship. (When that didn't happen), we thought she was just going back to Europe.
"When she came to our camp and met our players, it stayed on her mind. We were just not aware of it. She wasn't somebody we recruited."
Gyori got Division I offers, but not from anywhere she wanted to be. Instead of taking a scholarship, she and her family took on the expense of tuition at a private college because, as she said, she had "fallen in love" with Messiah.
"I had quite a few Division I offers, but there were a lot of things about Messiah I preferred," Gyori said. "The atmosphere of the school, the coaching staff, the girls on the team, the Christian aspect. That gave them the advantage over Division I schools."
Another advantage was Messiah, a young team at the time, could give Gyori more playing time. She has started every game of her career. She has averaged double digits in points each year, increasing her average each year, and has never averaged fewer than eight rebounds per game in any season. To do that, she said, required constant improvement, as rivals acquired scouting reports about her.
"My freshman year, nobody really knew what I was doing," said Gyori. "Now I know that every team we play has scouted every single move I've ever made."
While Gyori has obviously mastered basketball and academics – she says her GPA is 3.89 –overcoming distance is not so easy. Her parents attended all her games when she was in Europe. They are relegated to watching her Messiah games online, often with tipoff after midnight in Hungary.
Gyori has found herself a welcome guest of her Messiah friends and their families. She has spent her four Thanksgivings during college with four different Messiah families.
"One time I was sick and this one mom made me cookies and brought me medicine," she said. "I just feel so blessed to have had people open their homes to me."
Gyori plans to return to Europe and hopes to play professionally, but first things first.
"Our goal as a team (is) we definitely want to win the MAC championship. And get to the NCAA Final Four.
"And then we want to win a championship."