Along with the trepidation and anxiety of leaving home for the first time was the excitement of realizing her dream of becoming a major college basketball player.

Rosemary Kosiorek knew when she arrived on the West Virginia University campus in the fall of 1988 that things weren’t going to be easy. The women’s basketball program wasn’t nationally known, and the dual coaching roles of Kittie Blakemore and Scott Harrelson offered a certain level of confusion.

For those not familiar with the program, Kittie handled the administrative tasks and the day-to-day problems of the players while Scott was responsible for game strategy.

This formula produced moderate success in the mid-1980s when Blakemore teamed with Bill Fiske. The two led West Virginia to a 20-win season in 1985 and a WNIT berth.

Fiske became ill during the 1986 season and had to relinquish his coaching role when he lost his eyesight. Harrelson, a former college player at Southwest Texas State, came into the picture during Fiske’s illness and took over in 1987.

By 1989, West Virginia had a pretty good group of seniors in Jenny Hillen, Judy Eaton and Dionne Morris. What the program was missing was a keg of dynamite to ignite it.

Rosemary Kosiorek was West Virginia’s nitroglycerin.

The Baltimore, Md., native played the game like a reckless daredevil, driving to the basket with carefree abandon that 5’5" girls aren’t supposed to possess. The point guard learned this kamikaze style playing with her older brother Kenny, partly to impress him and partly to keep playing with him.

It was not uncommon to see Kosiorek’s body covered from head to toe with bruises. She carried them around like proud emblems. Those marks represented past battles and provided a reminder to her opponents of the combat yet to come.

Rosemary’s classmate Donna Abbott carried similar battle scars. And like Rosemary, Donna made up for whatever lack of physical ability she had with an intense desire to out-will the opposition.

Donna might have clanked a shot or two off the backboard every now and then. At times she may have even clanked a couple in a row. But make no mistake about it, that third shot was going into the basket. It didn’t matter who was in her way or how big the other person was in front of her. It was Donna Abbott’s basketball.

Rosemary Kosiorek and Donna Abbott weren’t your typical late-1980s early-1990s women’s college basketball players. In a lot of respects they were 10 years ahead of their time.

They understood that sometimes the game could get nasty, that being polite wasn’t always the way to play. Sometimes you had to take the gloves off.

Rosemary calls it competitive spirit.

"That’s what probably made our team," she says. "If it was a mean streak or a super competitive streak – that is what elevated our team.

"We had to do something to make up for the lack of talent," she said. "We did have some talent, but I don’t think any of the players in my class were highly recruited by any stretch. It was our hard work and desire to win."

West Virginia surprised everyone by winning the Atlantic 10 conference tournament during Kosiorek’s freshman season. The Mountaineers upset Penn State and St. Joseph’s to play Temple in the championship game. The Mountaineers defeated the Owls by nine points to reach the NCAA tournament for the first time in school history.

A win at nationally ranked Western Kentucky followed in the first round of the tournament. Virginia knocked WVU out of the tournament in the second round.

Although senior Jenny Hillen led the team with 507 points and was a good player in her own right, the program had already taken on the personality of freshmen Kosiorek and Abbott.

Nineteen and 17-win seasons followed in 1990 and 1991.

In the meantime, Kosiorek was picked to play for the East team in the U.S. Olympic Sports Festival in the summer of 1990. It was the first time a player from the Mountaineer program had even been considered for the event.

By the fall of 1991, West Virginia had strung together three straight winning seasons. However, there was a bitter taste in the mouths of the players following the ‘91 campaign.

Losses to Marshall and Temple were among the 12 casualties sustained by West Virginia that season. A bitter 43-point defeat at Penn State in the Atlantic 10 tournament punctuated a disappointing year. Lion fans harassed the West Virginia players and coaches throughout the game.

Toward the end of the contest, one creative Penn State antagonist yelled at Harrelson to sit down and let Kittie coach the rest of the game.

Rosemary wasn’t amused. Unlike Abbott who chose her words economically, Kosiorek wasn’t afraid to let her opinions be known to her teammates.

"Unfortunately probably too many times," she laughed.

Kosiorek wasn’t pleased with the way her junior season ended and she made up her mind that it was time for the team to get its act together. That also included her.

Kosiorek averaged 20.2 points and 6.2 assists per game in 1991 to earn honorable mention All-America honors. She became the first player in conference history to lead the league in both scoring and assists. She dumped 32 points on St. Bonaventure and had 20 points or more 15 other times. She was doing things no other player had done in the West Virginia program. Her name was becoming well known throughout the country.

But Rosemary understood that legacies weren’t built on individual accomplishments.

Jerry West wasn’t widely admired because he once scored 44 points in a game against Tennessee, or reached the 40-point mark three other times during his Mountaineer career. He was revered because people realized his determination and sheer desire willed a good West Virginia basketball program into becoming one of the nation’s best.

Kosiorek had to come to terms with her own legacy. She could selfishly break all the conference scoring records and be known as a great individual player, or she could elevate a basketball program into a source of pride for the school and the state -- something for future teams to measure against.

"I just wanted to do something for the school and the program," she shrugged.

After knocking off a solid Florida team to open the ’92 season, West Virginia lost a pair of games to nationally ranked Virginia and Western Kentucky on their home floors. The Virginia loss was by 29 while the Western Kentucky defeat came at the buzzer, 85-84.

"We were in the Virginia game until late and we lost by one at Western Kentucky. If you step on the court against a top 25 team and get mashed, you begin to think ‘wait a minute we’re not at that level.’ That didn’t happen to us."

Following the Western Kentucky loss, West Virginia reeled off a school record 22-game winning streak. The Mountaineers were in the national rankings for the first and only time in school history, climbing all the way to No. 11 by the end of the season. News of the West Virginia women’s basketball program even reached the pages of USA Today.

Kosiorek, Abbott and senior teammates Jocelyn Branham and Lori Wilson were practically doing daily interviews by the end of the year. More than 2,500 showed up for West Virginia’s last home game of the season against Rutgers.

That may not seem like a lot, but in some years the women’s basketball team didn’t draw 2,500 for the entire season.

After games, young girls and boys hustled to the West Virginia locker room door to get Rosemary’s autograph. Kosiorek possessed many qualities that West Virginians admired -- particularly the nine, 10 and 11-year-old kids.

And what a perfect example for a youngster to emulate.

Kosiorek was a terrific shooter, a gifted playmaker and an underrated defender. She could lull a ballhandler to sleep at midcourt. Then while the dribbler had her back to her, Kosiorek would pounce with cat-like reflexes and snatch the basketball away and drive untouched to the other basket.

As good as she was at those facets of the game it was Kosiorek’s speed that set her apart from others.

West Virginia’s best offensive play was Abbott getting the rebound and slinging a perfect pass to Kosiorek at halfcourt. Rosemary did the rest.

"My speed clearly contributed to every facet of my game," she says.

West Virginia had a chance to snag a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, but got leveled in the Atlantic 10 tournament by Duquesne, the A-10’s lowest seed. To this day it is still the biggest upset in Atlantic 10 tournament history.

"That should have never happened," she says of the one-point upset loss to the Dukes.

The Mountaineers were knocked out of the conference tournament with a 25-3 record. West Virginia landed a No. 4 seed and hosted Clemson in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

More than 8,000 fans paid money to watch that basketball game. It was an astonishingly remarkable achievement for the West Virginia University women’s basketball program.

The Mountaineers won the Clemson game on a last second shot by Jodie Runner. A week later West Virginia was eliminated in the round of 16 by the same Virginia team that defeated it earlier in the year.

The Cavaliers clearly had the best team in the country in 1992, but wound up losing in the regional finals.

West Virginia finished the year with a 26-4 record, ranked No. 14 in the nation. Kosiorek averaged a school-record 24.3 points per game and handed out a school-record 203 assists. She single-handedly accounted for 1,136 points -- or roughly half of the team’s total amount of points scored that season.

How many players can say they’ve done that?

Kosiorek became the school’s first Kodak All-American and was recognized as the Frances Pomeroy Naismith national player of the year for players 5’5" and under. She was also a finalist for the Margaret Wade Trophy given to the national player of the year.

Her national acclaim was a liberating achievement for the hard-working women of the West Virginia University athletic department.

This is not meant to belittle the accomplishments of other women’s All-Americans at WVU, but Rosemary Kosiorek was the school’s first selected female All-American. As you are probably well aware, West Virginia athletes usually don’t get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to national popularity contests.

That’s just how good Rosemary was.

Following an invitation to try out for the U.S. Olympic team, Rosemary had had enough of basketball. She accomplished everything she had set out to do when she came to West Virginia.

"I couldn’t have written a better script for my career," she admitted.

A few years ago former West Virginia player Cathy Parson convinced Kosiorek to come to a WNBA tryout, but she immediately saw that a professional basketball life wasn’t to her liking.

"That (tryout) was a disaster. It was so unorganized, it was just ridiculous," she said.

Kosiorek, now Rosemary Myers, lives in Forest Hills, Md., with her husband Doug, also a WVU graduate. She’s been with the accounting firm KMPG LLP for the past 10 years. Since then she’s advanced to senior manager. The next step up the ladder for her is a partnership in the firm.

"It’s a pretty good living from a financial perspective," she says. "The things you learn on the court kind of carry over into this industry."

The Myers’ have a one-year-old daughter, Annika.

"She keeps us very busy," says Rosemary.

Meanwhile, Kosiorek says her former teammate Donna Abbott is living in a small town in eastern Kentucky not too far from the West Virginia border. If not for playing in Rosemary’s shadow, Donna would have certainly been more widely recognized. Regardless, Donna Abbott is still one of the two or three best players to ever put on a Mountaineer uniform.

"Her work ethic was unbelievable," Kosiorek said of her teammate and friend. "She is certainly one of the best to ever play at West Virginia University. Unfortunately she will probably kind of stand in my shadow."

Also unfortunate is the dramatic downturn of the West Virginia women’s program. The Mountaineers have had just one winning season since 1992, and hit rock bottom two years ago after losing by 72 points to Connecticut.

The state of the program is distressing to Kosiorek.

"We wanted that thing to continue," she said. "I talk to people now and they ask me where I went to school and I tell them West Virginia. Their first reaction is that West Virginia is terrible. I remind them that we were pretty good when I was there. Hopefully the new coaching staff can get things turned around."

In an athletic career filled with tributes, perhaps Rosemary’s greatest accolade came last year when she was one of two females picked among the school’s 25 greatest athletes of the 20^th century in an Internet poll.

Undoubtedly a lot of those votes came from the nine, 10 and 11-year-old kids that once sought her autograph and are now grown up.

Yes, it sure is hard to forget someone like Rosemary Kosiorek.

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