VANCOUVER — When it comes to conversing, German is always going to be her native language.
Yet there’s two others that UBC Thunderbirds’ 6-foot third-year forward Mona Berlitz seems to be able to speak with equal fluency.
One is the English language and the other is the language of basketball.
Put them all together and nothing gets lost in translation.
In fact in the lead up to Saturday, when Berlitz and her UBC teammates open the post-season with the program’s first home playoff game in six seasons following a brilliant 24-3 regular season, it’s been the pluck she’s shown over a journey from half-way around the world that best illustrates the purpose with which she leads her life.
“I think it’s huge to have some joy for what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with,” begins UBC head coach Isabel Ormond when asked to comment on the smile that Berlitz seems to wear on a pretty regular basis while battling alongside her teammates on game nights.
“If you’re only playing for wins and stats, I think you can set yourself up to struggle, especially when things get challenging.”
And although she has thus far led her team in both scoring (17.4 ppg) and rebounding (6.9 rpg) this season, Berlitz, like all players, has not been immune to such moments.
Yet her level of mettle is not surprising, especially when you consider how young she was when she decided to set about the task of finding the place to both study and play the sport she loved.
“It was the summer before I went into my last two years of (high school)… when your GPA really starts to matter in Germany,” remembers Berlitz, 22, who grew up in Schrobenhausen, a small German town about 70-kilometres south of Munich.
“I was terrible at languages, and I saw the opportunity to go somewhere to just learn it… to speak it… you always just learn how to write it.”
With her older brother Jonas already in Vancouver as part of internship program, Berlitz hopped on a plane to join him in the summer of 2019 at the age of just 16.
She took some English classes, conversed with the locals, and also made her way to what was to ultimately become her second home.
“I got a campus tour (of UBC) and I joined a two-week Thunderbirds basketball camp,” remembers Berlitz, who back then had not hit her growth spurt and thus stood at 5-foot-8.
Berlitz says she found out about the UBC camp because a pro coach she knew back home in Germany was good friends with then-UBC assistant and current Victoria head coach Carrie Watts.
“Thats how the connection was made,” she says.
Thus while Berlitz returned back home to Germany to complete her final two years of high school, the UBC seed had been planted, and she would return as a freshman in 2022-23 under a new coaching regime led by current New Brunswick head coach Erin McAleenan.
A GROWTH SPURT AND A GRAND NEW STAGE
Ever since pushing through a will-testing, injury-riddled rookie season, one in which she tore the PCL in her right knee in the preseason, made a brief return, then suffered a stress fracture in left foot, the real Mona Berlitz has been allowed to blossom before the home fans at War Memorial Gymnasium.
“When I was 16, I was like 5-8. I literally started to grow when I was 17 or 18,” remembers Berlitz. “So I always played guard.”
But it wasn’t long before her growth spurt became apparent to the coaches in the Eigner Angels professional club back home in Germany. Eventually, she was moved into the front court, and ultimately realized she had something to offer from every spot on the floor.
“But I was also really skinny back then,” she continues. “I really only started to take on muscle when I got here to UBC.”
And when a more fully-realized Berlitz was able to take to the floor as a healthy UBC regular under new head coach Ormond beginning at the start of the 2023-24 season, the Thunderbirds seemed to take their biggest and surest steps yet in gaining a team identity, something that had been elusive since the legendary Deb Huband retired after leading the team to three U SPORTS national titles as part of a 25-year run which included 476 overall wins.
“Between her and Olivia Weekes, I think we need at least one of them on the court at all times, ideally both,” began Ormond, speaking to how the unique pairing of Berlitz and 5-foot-11 fourth-year guard Weekes have put a new face on UBC women’s basketball. “I think Mona just brings so much strength and relentlessness in the paint that the second she gets the ball down there… catches it inside, the other team is trouble. And a lot of it is just her will to find a good shot for her, or for her teammates. It’s her will to take contact.”
And it’s been a winning look, especially with senior post Jessica Clarke and freshman guard Keira Daly bringing an ever deeper and dangerous look to the main core.
Which brings us, in the midst of talk of unique talents, to perhaps the most unique aspect of all as it pertains to the game of Mona Berlitz.
“I think it’s her ability to shoot with both hands,” begins Ormond. “She’ll go up for a lay-up with her right hand, and in mid-air switch to the left. And I don’t know how, as a defender, you could do much more… Her ability to play with both hands is pretty unique.”
SHE KEEPS YOU GUESSING
You always hear about the most famous ambidextrous players. You know, the NBA stars like Larry Bird, LeBron James and the late Kobe Bryant.
None of them are or were 100 per cent ambidextrous to the full letter of its dictionary definition.
Yet it’s more about their ability to summon the use of both hands when the occasion so warrants.
And in that regard, well?
“I realize that it’s not normal to brush your teeth with both hands,” Mona Berlitz says laughing out loud. “I do one side with my left hand and one side with my right.
“I have a lot of things that I do with both hands… I kind of think I might be ambidextrous.”
Take the way she started writing.
“I write with my left hand, but growing up I wrote with both hands,” she says. “My parents told me that when I started to write, I was mirroring, having a pen in each hand and just writing.”
These days, Berlitz makes the art of jump shots and lay-ins as unique as brushing her teeth or signing her name.
“I think especially in the paint, I am really even with my left and right hand,” she explains. “Last year I drove a lot with my left hand and people scouted me that way so this year I went to my right (hand).
Berlitz says at one stage, in the offseason following her rookie campaign, then-head coach McAleenan and her discussed the uniqueness of her left versus her right.
“Erin was like ‘Do you think it would be easier to just decide on one hand?’ She was like ‘Why don’t you take the whole summer and just shoot everything with your left hand, even your threes?’ That was the only thing I shot with my right hand, and everything else I did with both. So I took the summer to work on my left hand.”
McAleenan, however, wound up resigning to take a job at her alma mater UNB.
“I just decided to keep on improving both hands after she left,” said Berlitz, who this season is shooting 48 per cent from the field, 31 per cent from beyond the arc, and 75 per cent from the free throw stripe. Then, in the preseason, I hurt my (right) thumb, so I shot them with my left. And in practice and when I’m alone, I’ll shoot two free throws with my right and then two free throws with my left. Just for fun.
“But you know what, really, it just comes naturally and so I don’t think about it a lot.”
Which just might be the truest sign of her ambidexterity?
VANCOUVER A HOME AWAY FROM HOME
Fuelled by the momentum of an 18-2 Canada West regular season and by an automatic berth to the U SPORTS Final 8 nationals March 13-16 by virtue of its host status, anything and everything is on the table for the UBC Thunderbirds over its final month of play.
Yet ask Berlitz about what is most important to the team’s dynamic, and she’ll tell you it has been all about the close-knit nature of the roster.
In fact, that’s something she discovered first hand when hit by her aforementioned bookend injuries in her rookie season of 2022-23.
Here she was, an entire trans-Atlantic flight away from home, in a new city, unable to play basketball, and unable to return home for Christmas because her exams were being held so late and the return date to practice made it impractical anyways.
“I feel like I grew so much that year,” she says. I was in my little dorm room with no kitchen. Just me. It was tough but my recruitment class, there were six of us, we were all there for each other.
“One of my teammate’s family actually adopted me for Christmas,” she laughs with appreciation of North Vancouver native Sophia Bergman. “Bergie is my best friend now on the team and her family is literally my Canadian family now.”
What a journey.
At the age 16 walking into War Memorial Gymnasium for the first time and getting her first notion of what it would be like to play basketball for the UBC Thunderbirds.
To harbour that through two seasons and a global pandemic, and then to eventually make it back over the pond to play.
And then to go through a coaching change, one which has seen the team reach new heights, but one which is never guaranteed to have the kind of forward momentum that the current regime has brought.
“I felt that with all of the changes around us, it just helped us grow closer together and it’s helped us to where we are now,” Berlitz explained. “We’re all here for each other. We’re really, really close.
“We all love to hang out with each other after practice… we see everyone literally every day and we still… it seems like we can’t have enough time together. I just feel like all the transitions and changes have just brought us closer together.”
THIS WEEKEND
UBC is the host of one of four Canada West opening-round playoff sites this Friday and Saturday at War Memorial Gymnasium.
The UBC Okanagan Heat will play the Regina Cougars in a 5:30 p.m game on Friday. UBC will host the winner in a 4 p.m. Canada West quarterfinal tip-off on Saturday.
The UBC men will also host a playoff weekend at War Memorial Gym over the weekend.
On Friday, Mt. Royal will face Winnipeg in a 7:30 p.m. start. The winner of that game will face UBC at 6 p.m. Saturday in a Canada West quarterfinal clash.
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Wow… aren‘t they looking for her for the German national team???