“I don’t think there’s a lot of people who thought that I would end up where I am today,” Emma Huff said.
Coming out of Philemon Wright High School in 2015, the Chelsea, Que. forward wasn’t on the radar for any university basketball program. Now, she’s on Carleton’s women’s basketball team.
Huff said not being recruited motivated her. Instead, Huff went to Champlain College-Lennoxville for three seasons. She said people doubted about whether she would even play at Champlain.
As one of seven new Ravens players this season, Huff said she loves the competitive spirit and is grateful to be here.
After all, it wouldn’t have been possible if she didn’t go to Champlain.
“Going to Champlain, I changed a lot. I learned a lot about myself in that time,” Huff said. “I just matured and I think it gives me a different perspective coming into university and [I’m] obviously, way older than the other rookies.” She turned 21 on Nov. 6.
Huff moved away from home and even stayed at Champlain in the summers to work out and coach high school players. She said Champlain taught her responsibility and discipline.
Her experience at Champlain also taught her how to deal with adversity.
“We struggled a lot to win games,” Huff said. “That was difficult.”
Champlain was promoted to division one the year Huff arrived at the college —just as current Carleton teammate Cynthia Dupont left. She was one of 12 rookies. The team won two games in Huff’s first season, four in her second and only one in her final year.
“I think that almost motivated me even more,” she said. “I just wanted to work all the time. I wanted to give myself the best opportunity when it was time for me to graduate to have options, to be able to go wherever I wanted, academically and athletically.”
That long-term vision pushed her through the “taxing” losses.
“Now I value winning more than you can even imagine,” she added.
Despite the losses, Huff said she credits her experience for shaping her as the person and player she is today.
“I don’t know if I’d be here if not for that experience,” she said.
Champlain’s only victory last season was in Huff’s final game, after a tough year with “a lot of stuff that happened.”
“Oh my God. It was actually the best moment ever,” she said. “To win that game at the end—I’m not joking—it felt like the championship.”
Huff has always had a passion for school as she said she genuinely likes learning and being challenged intellectually. She won numerous academic awards at Champlain.
Ravens head coach Taffe Charles, who said he’s known Huff a long time, called her a “quality person” and an “excellent student.” He pointed that she has “the highest student [average] we’ve ever had coming into Carleton.”
Huff said Champlain also provided clarity on her academic future.
“I was able to take all kinds of different courses at Champlain and kind of give me an idea of what I’m actually interested in,” she said.
Huff is majoring in political science at Carleton, with a focus on international relations. She said she wants to travel and be exposed to different experiences worldwide.
“It’s a desire to move away from ignorance and I just want to be more aware of what’s going on around me and why things are happening around me,” she said.
Huff originally committed to the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus in 2017 before de-committing because “things didn’t work out.”
She arrived at Carleton in July after having “in-depth” conversations with Charles about growing as a player and person.
“In the end, I really feel confident that it was kind of a blessing in disguise, and like this is where I need to be,” she said.
Huff values her Chelsea roots and attributes who she is today to where she came from.
“I’m really a product of the community that I grew up in,” she said. “I don’t feel like I really had any huge people I was looking up to. It was really my people around me.”
Growing up, Huff said she never thought she would be playing at Carleton but here she is.
“I would go and watch Capital Hoops all the time and I was like ‘oh my God this is crazy, I wish I could I could do this one day,’” she said.
“In my head, I was like ‘I don’t think that’s ever where I’m going to end up’,” she added. “It’s kind of crazy that it all kind of went full-circle and I ended up back here.”
Photo by Tim Austen
