From Practice Player to Captain: Jenna Moser’s Incredible Journey

By Rich Myhre

By Washington Huskies

If you asked University of Washington women's basketball player Jenna Moser to list the great moments in her life, this one migJht be near the top.

It happened after a team practice earlier in the fall. First-year UW head coach Jody Wynn called the squad together and began to administer a scolding, feigning frustration over an apparent lack of hustle. The players – including Moser, a senior walk-on point guard – figured they were about to run some punitive wind sprints.

But it was all a ruse, and after a few seconds Wynn's face broke into a giveaway smile. One Washington player, she then announced, had been working extremely hard since the new coaching staff arrived a few months before. Moreover, she said, this player personified everything the coaches wanted in their program.

By this time, some Huskies sensed what was coming. They were starting to cry, though Moser remained unaware. Looking around and seeing tears, she thought, "Should I be crying, too?"

Then came the big moment. "From this day forward," Wynn said, "Jenna is going to be on a full scholarship."

From Practice Player to Captain: Jenna Moser’s Incredible Journey

And at that point, bedlam. Teammate and good friend Hannah Johnson gleefully tackled Moser and the other players piled on in celebration. The coaches were beaming and wiping away tears of their own.

Moser kept her own composure until she gave the news to her mother. Using a speaker phone in a corner of the gym, and with her teammates gathered around, she called the school where her mom is a teacher.

"I know I scared her because I never call my mom at her school unless it's an emergency," Moser said. "But I told her about the scholarship and she said, 'Oh, Jenna. We're so proud of you.' I told her she was on the speaker phone and she said, 'Give hugs to everyone around you.'"

So Moser obliged, with more hugs prompting more happy tears.

The scholarship, she said, "is beyond meaningful. You get to your senior year and you're thinking, 'This is my last year, I'm going to do everything I can anyway. I'm going to give it my all.' So regardless, I was fine (remaining a walk-on). But the scholarship was just an incredible white cherry on top."

Rewarding Moser with a scholarship "was a no-brainer," Wynn said. "And it wasn't a gift just because she's a senior and she's been here. She earned it. … Jenna epitomizes everything we want in a student-athlete. She's somebody that cares about her academics, cares about working hard, cares about her teammates and cares about her program. Everything she's involved with, she has this caring way about her.

"We were just waiting for the right time to tell her, and we had the opportunity to do so in front of the whole team. It was a pretty special moment."

To get a sense of how truly special that moment was, it helps to go back to the beginning for Moser, which takes us to the small eastern Washington community of Colton. Located about 10 miles south of Pullman on Highway 195, and about 10 miles north of the neighboring towns of Clarkston, Washington, and Lewiston, Idaho, Colton has about 500 residents. Many of them, like the Mosers, live on farms outside the small downtown area, which includes a post office, a shop, a church and not much else.

As you might imagine, growing up in Colton is very different from living in Seattle, or even in eastern Washington cities like Spokane, Yakima, Ellensburg and the Tri-Cities. Jenna Moser was the third of four girls in the family, and all the kids had chores on a farm that produces crops of wheat, barley, garbanzo beans and peas. Even today, if she is home for very long, there is always something she can do to help out.

But although the work was hard, the memories are absolutely precious. "I loved growing up on a farm," Moser said. "It's such an experience that no one else has. Riding on a four-wheeler in the field, riding with your dad in the combine, and things like that. And being in an open environment. That's what I think about when I go home. The rolling hills."

Colton High School, which "was really the central point for everything (in town)," had 52 students, including 17 graduates, in Moser's senior year of 2013-14. "All my friends were farm kids," she said.

It would be hard to outdo what Moser accomplished in her four years of high school. She had a cumulative 4.0 GPA, which earned her a place in the National Honor Society, and as a senior she was the school's ASB president. In sports, she received 12 varsity letters in volleyball, basketball and softball, and her basketball teams won four consecutive Class B state championships. As a senior in basketball, she was the state Class B Player of the Year.

Still, Colton is a little off the beaten path for college coaches, and Moser received only a few token recruiting letters from small Northwest schools. Figuring she was finished with sports, she instead decided to go "the academic route," and she applied to several West Coast universities before ultimately deciding on Washington, where her two older sisters attended.

And then a funny thing happened. Unbeknownst to Moser, Colton girls basketball coach Clark Vining sent an email to UW head women's coach Mike Neighbors. Vining included Moser's statistics and accolades, explained that she had been admitted to Washington, and asked if Neighbors would consider letting her have a walk-on tryout.

Sure, Neighbors wrote in an email reply, and he requested that Moser get in touch when she arrived on campus.

The introductory meeting with Neighbors occurred in July of 2014, and Moser was soon working out with the team. At the outset she was only a practice player, which meant she did not suit up for games or accompany the team on the road. Also, Moser's ambitious academic schedule – she had been accepted into a UW honors program – made it impractical for her to be at every team practice.

So that first season passed and then a second season started, and by then Neighbors was asking if Moser wanted to be a full-fledged team member. For a time she remained non-committal, but in January of her sophomore year she finally agreed. On Feb. 7, 2016, she suited up for a home game against Oregon. She played for the first time at Arizona on Feb., 19, logging two scoreless minutes.

By the end of the season she had played just five minutes in five games, but she was also part of the team that reached the Final Four in Indianapolis, where the Huskies lost to Syracuse in the national semifinals.

A year ago, which was her junior season, she played a little more, although still in a deep reserve role. Her first collegiate points – on a 3-point goal, no less – came against Washington State in a Jan. 22, 2017 game in Pullman. Making it more special, a few folks from nearby Colton were on hand to see it.

But the end of the season, which came in a Sweet 16 loss to Mississippi State, brought significant changes to the Washington women's basketball program. Guard Kelsey Plum departed to the WNBA as the No. 1 overall draft pick and Neighbors left for Arkansas, which is both his alma mater and his native state.

Wynn was hired on April 14 and Moser wondered if the new head coach would keep her on the roster. They met in the spring and Wynn ended that uncertainty right away.

"She told me, 'I've talked to your coaches and I've talked to your teammates about you. And from what I've heard, there's no way you're going anywhere,'" Moser recalled.

Said Wynn, "Jenna is a young lady that's bright, that's responsible, that wanted to be here, and that was respected by her teammates. Everybody loves Jenna."

Still, Wynn did not have a chance to see Moser play at full speed and strength until this fall. She had been limited by a stress fracture in her leg during spring workouts, and then spent the summer in southern California participating in a marketing internship with Nike, Inc.

But when the full squad reconvened in September, Moser was healthy again and ready to impress. Right off, Wynn said, "she just crushed our conditioning test (during training camp). She was awesome."

In other workouts, Wynn went on, "Jenna gave 110 percent in everything she did. And you just loved being around her. She was easy to coach in the sense that she was respectful. And even though she might not do everything right, she was going to go hard while doing it.

"She leads by example with her teammates, and you see her teammates following her on the court."

The Huskies opened the 2017-18 season with six returning letter winners, but without five of their top six scorers from a year ago. The roster includes seven new players – five freshmen, one community college transfer and an injury redshirt – which left Wynn with no clear idea of a starting lineup throughout most of fall practices.

When Washington took the court for the season opener against Idaho State on Nov. 12, Moser was the starting point guard. To date she is the only player to have started every game, and she is averaging 10.0 points, 3.7 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.9 steals in a little over 29 minutes a game. Her 17 3-point goals and her .515 3-point percentage (33 attempts) are both team highs.

Against Idaho on Dec. 1, Moser played 34 minutes and had a terrific shooting night, going 6-for-7 from the field, including 4-for-4 from the 3-point line. She also converted all five free throw attempts to total a career-high 21 points in an 81-69 UW victory. Two nights later she delivered a career-best seven assists in Washington's 93-67 win vs. Portland.

"Jenna plays so hard within possessions and she understands what we're doing, she cares enough to watch a lot of film, and she doesn't allow her lack of experience to get in the way of her ability to perform," Wynn said. "She makes up for her lack of experience with her effort in the film room or her effort talking with coaches or her effort of getting in extra reps or her everyday effort at practice. So she's earned that (starting) spot."

Becoming a starter "was special because you do feel appreciated," Moser said. "But I didn't feel any more respect from my teammates. I already felt I had all their respect and all the coaches' respect.

"Coming from the role I had before, I value time on the floor so much because it's such a precious thing … and I'm so, so grateful," she added. "But I didn't feel any pressure. I didn't feel I had to do anything differently. Just knowing (the coaches') philosophy and knowing what they wanted from me, I knew if I continued to do exactly what I've been doing that they'd be proud (of me) and not regret (their decision)."

Still, given all Moser has accomplished in a little more than three years, she can be excused for having an occasional "Pinch me" moment. As in, "Pinch me, I must be dreaming."

Since arriving in Seattle, Moser has gone from being an unrecruited walk-on to becoming the starting point guard on an NCAA Division I program. It is an unlikely tale – and one that is as unlikely to Moser as anyone.

"Some days it feels like I'm living a dream," admitted Moser, who is nearing an undergraduate business degree with a finance emphasis. "But I make it a constant goal to not be caught up in it and walk through it mindlessly. I wake myself up and say, 'This is really cool, so now take advantage of it because you only have four more months (until the end of her final season).'"

For Wynn, what Moser is doing is similar to the movie "Rudy," where a player of modest talent ends up on the Notre Dame football team and makes a quarterback sack on the final play of his final game, and then gets carried off the field on the shoulders of his jubilant teammates. It is a true story and one of the top feel-good sports movies of all-time.

The message of "Rudy" – and, for that matter, Jenna Moser's story – "is that you shouldn't put limits on yourself," Wynn said. "And you can also move that from sports to different arenas in life. You could start out in the mail room and then work your way up to be the CEO of a company.

"You have to have realistic goals, but you also have to have that drive to keep chasing and fighting and going after what you want and what you believe in. In Jenna's case, she's an ordinary girl that has this extraordinary desire to succeed and she's making the most of her opportunities."