SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Dara Mabrey would sit at the end of the bench, her feet hanging off the chair, the floor still inches away. The youngest of the three Mabrey sisters, then-10-year-old Dara played up an AAU level in New Jersey to keep the trio together for their parents' ease. She would go in at the end of games, but rarely saw the court otherwise. Instead, she'd sit and swing her legs, back and forth, and wave across the court at Niele Ivey, the Notre Dame assistant coach recruiting her oldest sister.
That roster featured freshman Arike Ogunbowale with Jackie Young signed as a recruit, setting up an even more decorated stretch. Notre Dame reached the championship game again in 2017 and broke through to win it in 2018 on the iconic Ogunbowale buzzer-beater against Mississippi State.
“But it made me dig deeper into thinking about what I truly wanted when I got to school and growing into a young woman,” Dara said. “It was tough getting recruited in high school just because people had their pre-recruiting thoughts about where I was going to go.” Dara decided to make the difficult decision to enter the transfer portal in March 2020, an odd time given the NCAA tournament had been canceled days earlier and people were beginning to quarantine at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Michaela and Dara were both home in New Jersey when McGraw reached out to Dara with interest in adding her to the Irish roster.
Michaela concurred that Ivey"1,000% wanted Dara as badly as Coach McGraw did." But the process to have her admitted to Notre Dame and transfer credits dragged on amid COVID-19 protocols and slowdowns. When it was made official, they still had to wait for the“I really knew at the end of the day with my heart that I wanted to come here and it was the easiest yes of my life,” Dara said.
Dara and then-freshman Maddy Westbeld, whose older sister, Kathryn, was a freshman on the 2018 title team, started every game and led the team in total points. They went 10-10 and Miles enrolled early to play in six games. With Citron in the fold for 2021-22, Notre Dame stormed back into the NCAA tournament and put the nation on noticeover No. 4-seeded Oklahoma.
“You need that person in the locker room that can share that message and be on the same page with what I’m trying to accomplish,” Ivey said.
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