(1957-2002)
Inducted into Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, 1995
Harriet Novarr grew up in Hartford, attended the Yeshiva of Hartford and graduated from Hartford Public High School. In high school, she was all-state in basketball and volleyball. She was a pioneer of women’s basketball, among the first students to receive a full scholarship for women’s basketball at Syracuse University, where she held the highest single season scoring average. She played forward for two professional women’s basketball teams: Macabee Tel Aviv and in 1978, the New York Stars, in the first women’s professional basketball league in the United States. “I never thought I’d see it,” she told a reporter, “I’m very glad this league came along when it did.”
Also an accomplished tennis player, Novarr was ranked #1 in the Washington, D.C. area, where she worked for the Washington Tennis Foundation as an administrator of youth tennis programs. She subsequently worked for One on One Basketball, where a scholarship was named in her honor following her death in 2002.
She was also inducted into the Hartford Public High School Sports Hall of Fame in 2012.