Stanford women’s basketball added two transfers last season in junior guard Tess Heal from Santa Clara and sophomore forward Mary Ashley Stevenson from Purdue. Heal is averaging a solid 8.1 points per game on 52.6% shooting from the field, 50.8% shooting from 3-point range, and 86.1% shooting from the foul line, putting her in very elite company in terms of shooting percentages. As for Stevenson, she’s putting up more modest numbers with 4.5 points and 3.3 rebounds per game, but she’s done a great job of stepping up when called upon, most recently having to fill in with star forward Nunu Agara out.
While transferring to Stanford is a very unique experience given the academic selectivity of the school and the low numbers of transfers that they’ve taken over the years, both Heal and Stevenson have done a great job of settling in and meshing with their team at Maples Pavilion.
“It’s really exciting, I love being here,” Heal said. “I’m really grateful for the opportunity. I enjoyed my time at Santa Clara, but there is no place like Stanford. So yeah, I’m just excited to get out on the floor every day. We work our butts off in practice. So, really games on anything surprising, but we’re ready for the competition to come.”
“As somebody who hasn’t been here for four years in Maples, I’m absolutely loving it,” Stevenson said after their Senior Day victory over Georgia Tech. “I mean, you look at tonight, I mean, when we were hitting big shots, the crowd is going crazy and I mean, you can see our bench and I think that leads it because we have that same energy from the bench, whether we’re away or at home. But, it’s clear that when we are at Maples, there is a whole group of people that are behind us and so supportive and it means the world to us.”
One of the biggest challenges of transferring to a new school is having a different role than what you had at your previous school. Both Heal and Stevenson have adjusted to that side of things really well, learning and growing as the season has gone on.
“Yeah, it’s definitely different,” Heal said of her role at Stanford. “But like I said, I’m grateful for every opportunity I get. I knew going in transferring to Stanford that my role would probably change a little bit because this is a much better conference, it’s a much better team, and I’m really grateful to be apart of it and I just want to help the team in any which way I can. So, whatever I get and I’ll give everything I can when I get out there.
“I’m out there to do my job, do what I do well, which is right now I’m shooting the ball really well. My teammates and my coaches have a lot of confidence in me, but it’s not about scoring. It’s about playing good team basketball, getting good shots. If I’m the right person to take that shot, then I will take it, obviously, but I'm out there for defense, rebounding, finding open players, running the point guard, running the wing, whatever I can do to help this team, that’s what I’m gonna do.”
“Honestly, I think it’s just the confidence that my coaches and my teammates have in me,” Stevenson said of the key to her smooth adjustment. “Nunu, who we’re hoping gets back, as soon as possible, she’s one of my best friends on the this team. She’s incredible and I knew when she did get her concussion, well, it’s time for the rest of us to step up. She was a big contributor to our team and still is.
“But I think for me specifically, moving into the starting lineup, that gave me alright, time to turn it up, time to figure out how I can help this team more to keep winning because as we’ve seen in the past few games, this is exciting, this is what we want to do, we want to keep winning. And so whatever I can do to help our team keep winning, that’s what I’m going to do.”
In addition to getting used to a new school, Heal has also had to adjust to a new country coming from Australia. Heal has done a great job of adjusting to life in America and really enjoys representing her country.
“I mean, everything about being an Aussie is amazing,” Heal said. “I love being here. I love being able to represent my country. I think Aussie basketball has grown greatly recently, there’s lots of great Aussie basketball players in college and I’m proud to be one of them and I’m proud to be another Aussie that Stanford’s been able to recruit.”
Just a few years ago, Stanford had another talented Aussie in Alanna Smith, who is now excelling in the WNBA with the Minnesota Lynx. Heal doesn’t know Smith super well, but both of their dads have a tight relationship.
“I would say our dads are definitely closer,” Heal explained. “They played together at a club when they were kids, so they know each other very well. Alanna’s quite a bit older than me, so I don’t know her personally a lot. But we could talk. She’s very lovely. She’s a great basketball player.”
Something that has certainly helped Heal adjust to life at Stanford is the fact that Stanford actually recruited her out of high school. She already had some familiarity with the program when she got to Santa Clara and so when the opportunity came to transfer to Stanford, Heal had a much better feel of what to expect.
“We’d actually recruited Tess when she was still in high school,” Stanford head coach Kate Paye explained. “It was in the middle of the pandemic, so we did not have that opportunity to see her play in person. We had spoken over the phone, spoken over WhatsApp, obviously she was in Australia. Watched a lot of video.
“At that time her dad owned a gym and there was no games or anything going on. So, you know, all she could send me was pretty much videos of her dad rebounding for her doing spot shooting. I mean, that literally is what it was. It was kind of tough for us in that situation, never really having met her in person, seeing her in person. So, things didn’t work out kind of the first go around and she ended up at Santa Clara. I was very happy for her because, you know, obviously it’s a great school, great area, but this is kind of what it is now.
“We had an opportunity, we needed guards, we went into the portal, we were excited when we saw and MA [Mary Ashley Stevenson] was kind of the same thing. We had a preexisting relationship with her. We had recruited her in high school. You know, different things happen in recruiting where things kind of go one way or not, but I think that kind of at least on our end, I think helped that we felt like we knew Tess, we knew her dad, had a prior relationship, it could kind of pick up where we left off. And obviously we played Santa Clara once and I’d read in the paper all the time about how well Tess was doing and I was very happy for her and when the opportunity came to recruit her to Stanford, it really was a no-brainer.”
“Yeah, I mean, it was always a dream to come to Stanford,” Heal added. “We had talked when I was in high school and it just didn’t work that time out around. So when the opportunity came, I wanted to jump on it, but I mean, it’s Stanford. It’s a world-class education. You watch the girls play basketball, it’s a pleasure to play on this team and I am also grateful for the opportunity to do so. I love the team, I love the coaches, I love the campus, I love the place. It’s not a far drive down the road, but no, it was perfect for me. I’m really happy to be here.”
Like Heal, Stevenson has always dreamed of coming to Stanford. She ended up taking a different path at first by coming to Purdue, but now that she’s at Stanford, she feels like she’s where she is supposed to be.
“Yeah, I mean, I’ve always said it’s always been my dream to come here,” Stevenson said. “You know, I’ve had a little bit of a different journey than others, but the second I stepped on campus, you know, the second I got the first recruiting call from Kate, I mean, there’s no feeling like it. So I’m just, you know, happy to be here. Happy to represent Stanford. I think we are all really really proud to do it.”
Like many athletes on The Farm, it’s the community that Stevenson has most enjoyed. She’s loved how interconnected all the athletes are with one another and the way they are all supportive of each other. That more than anything has made her Stanford experience special.
“I think what I’ve enjoyed the most honestly, it is just the quality of people that I’m around on a day-to-day basis,” Stevenson said of her time at Stanford. “I think people, it’s so hard to understand when you’re not in it because, you know, I didn’t understand when I was somewhere else, but you come here and you are around a group of young women that are so driven and so supportive of each other.
“And not only that, but that’s throughout the Stanford athletics community. I mean, we had plenty of fans today from the men’s basketball team, from the women’s rowing team, I mean, I could list a bunch. But I think that’s what kind of means the most to me about this community.
“I just want to follow up, MA is outstanding,” Paye said of Stevenson. “She’s an outstanding member of our team. She’s a great teammate. She alluded, like nobody likes when anybody on our team gets hurt. But MA has had an opportunity and she’s taken advantage of it. But she laid the foundation, she did the preparation for it. She is a worker. She’s in the gym every day. She’s putting in extra time in the weight room, conditioning, she watches tons of film with coach Erica McCall. She has worked on her skillset, she’s spent time watching video to kind of really understand what we’re doing and I’m really excited about her improvement and the role she is playing on our team.”
All around, it’s clear that both Tess Heal and Mary Ashley Stevenson have done a great job of adjusting to life at Stanford after transferring in from different schools. They’ve bonded with their teammates, adjusted well to Stanford’s system, and seem poised to have even more success in their future seasons on The Farm.
“Obviously, transferring is never an easy process,” Heal said. “I don’t think it is for anybody and I’ve definitely gotten a lot more comfortable here. I feel right at home now. We’ve played, I don’t know what it is, 24 games or something. These players are my sisters, I’m really proud to be coached by Kate and the coaching staff and yeah, I feel right at home.”
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