Player Biography

As a PLAYER, Mo Holohan started out playing basketball in third grade when her father called her down from playing on the stage and asked her to be the 10th player in her older brother’s practice.  Her dad did not tell his daughter to be careful against those rough boys.  He did not say do your best, honey.  He said, “Go out there and win.”  In middle school, Mo spent hours writing down drills and recording her progress.  In eighth grade, after trying out for the first AAU team in her area, Mo was put on the B team.  Instead of quitting the team, like most of those who did not make the A team, she attended every practice, and by the end of the summer, she was a starter on the A Team.  Three years later, Mo started on the American Eagles AAU team, which finished fourth in the nation.  All 10 players received Division I scholarships. Mo’s high school experience also included being part of a talented team of underdogs at Troy High School (Troy, N.Y.).  With no reputation as a school with a basketball program, two dedicated coaches at Troy High implemented a program that attracted an increasing number of athletic and competitive girls, who committed to playing basketball year-round.  Mo often took the city bus down to the Boys Club, where she played for hours with the boys while waiting for her teammates to arrive.  The Lady Trojans at Troy High were one of the top teams responsible for building the legacy of girls’ basketball in the capital district.  In the 1988-98 season, 1,000 fans could not get into the Troy High vs. Shenendehowa sectional final game played at Colonie High School, the year in which Troy won and went on to win the state championship.

The following fall, Mo, a high-school All-American, was one of three Troy High starters who signed full Division I scholarships.  On December 27, one month after signing to play at Northwestern University, while playing in the prestigious Christ the King tournament, Mo moved right for a pass, but her left foot remained planted.  As Mo lay on the floor, the first adult who approached said to her, “You could have been a great player.”  She suffered a partial tear of her cruciate ligament, but opted to rehab in hopes of playing for the sectional and state finals. 

After moving the final game to a larger venue, 5,000 fans watched Troy vs. Shen play at the Glens Falls Civic Center.  Two minutes into the game, after feeling her knee wobble for second round, and throughout warm-ups in the finals, Mo tore the remainder of her ACL.  Despite a bench-clearing brawl and a last-minute comeback, the Trojans lost in the sectional finals.  One month later, Mo had her knee reconstructed.

At Northwestern University, limited to the sideline until December of her freshman year, Mo began playing again, but struggled to get her confidence back on a team loaded with veteran talent.  Mo went home during Christmas break, and went to the gym where she played a game of one-on-one against her younger brother, Ryan, who was growing taller and wider, a few inches shy of his current height of 6’5” (undisclosed weight).  For the first time in her life, Ryan beat Mo.  Ryan ran around the gym, carrying his animated victory laps outdoors and around town, telling everyone he had beaten his sister. 

After the holiday, Mo returned to campus and went head-to-head with the seniors while serving her time on the practice team.  Mo returned home for spring break, and she and her brother returned to the gym, where she beat Ryan 11-2.  At the end of the game, Mo did not run or dance or tell anyone.  She simply looked at her brother and said, “I am never playing you again.” 

Mo went on to become a three-time All-Big Ten player and honorable mention All-American.  In 1994, during the World University Games tryout at the Olympic training facility in Colorado Springs, Mo made it to the final round of 55 players, which included many All-Americans and Olympians.  On the last day of the tryout, Mo remembers going through warm-ups with the top players from Stanford, Tennessee, Connecticut, Georgia, where all the players were calling each other by their nicknames and first names.  Mo was called by her jersey number:  #87.

Mo can still remember being in the zone during the first few minutes of the national championship game in St. Louis.  Mo hit her first four shots.  Diana scored almost all of the rest.  After an emotional—borderline insane—final minute, which included three technical fouls assessed to the Chicago Twisters, the Twisters won.  No Chicago paper recorded the game or the box score.  Northwestern’s athletic director ran into Maureen a few weeks later, and he said, “Give it up and get on with your life.”  (See Mo’s full page feature in the Chicago Tribune.)

After winning the championship, under the promise and direction of a Greek agent and some friends playing in Greece, Mo sold her car, packed her clothes and waited for a ticket that would get her to Athens so she could play on a professional team.  (There was no ABL or WNBA at the time.)  Mo ended up in Greece, playing as a practice player on two teams.  After making repeated calls to an American agent from a phone booth on the street at midnight, Mo flew to Hungary for a one-week tryout.  When she stepped off the plane, the team manager approached Mo, introduced himself, looked her up and down and said, “Do you have a return ticket to Greece?” 

After double sessions, the manager invited Mo into the coach’s office and kept repeating, “You nice girl, you nice girl.”  Mo said, “Do not call me a nice girl one more time.”  Then, ten hours into her one-week tryout, the manager told Mo, “We don’t need you.”

Soon Mo ended up back at the airport, where, after exchanging $20 earlier, she realized she had no exchangeable currency and no access to a bank.  With what little she had left, she bought two bottles of beer and a small bottle of wine.  Unable to get a hold of her friends, she hoped for the best when she arrived in Greece in the middle of the night.  She waited in line for a cab, and when one picked her up, she was relieved that he spoke English and loved basketball.  As she told him about her day, he slammed the wheel and swerved all over the road.  At the end of the ride, Maureen offered what little Greek money she had, handed over the bag of alcohol.  He shook his head and said, “You need it more than me.” 

Four days later, after a few more calls from the phone booth, Mo’s agent guaranteed her an all-expense paid, one-week tryout in Israel.  After trying out on a team that had two Russian players—only two foreigners could play on each team—the coaching staff decided to keep Mo and the Russian center.  Mo moved in with Natasha, and her best friend, Sveta, who, after a few goodbye rendevous with her boyfriend Igor in the bedroom next to Mo, was sent back to Russia.  Mo spent six weeks living in a kibbutz with a cigarette-smoking and vodka-drinking Russian, and a filthy, stray dog she named Itchy.  Her professional basketball team played at home in front of an average of 25 fans.  After scoring 20 points in a losing effort, a team representative told Mo that if she didn’t start scoring 30 or more, she’d “be on a slow boat to Russia like the last one.”

Mo’s vision returned.   She spent the next few years playing in pickup games and in men’s and women’s rec leagues in her hometown and in New York City .  In 2004, after getting her teeth knocked out during a pick up game, and having some problems with her hip and feet, Mo began a series of meetings with herself.  She now considers herself 20-95 percent retired, and will only consider playing under the following conditions: 

1) If she is wearing her mouthguard, a slightly embarrassing yet mandatory protective device as thick as a bar of soap.

2) If she is wearing her mouthguard, and able to get on a team with a smart point guard who runs, and a big person who boards (not all big people hit the boards).  Otherwise Mo will be tempted to do everything and appear to be on crack.

3)  If she’s playing the lead role in her basketball movie, Money Game, under the direction of a feisty point guard like Tom Cavanagh, and surrounded by big men who hit the boards so that she does not have to mix it up, and can avoid wearing the mouthguard, despite the fact that her main dentist said he would prefer it if Mo wore the mouthguard on the set, even during her speaking lines.