Souderton’s Casey Harter headed to Northwestern with an ever-improving skillset

Lynn Carroll remembers watching Casey Harter match up against former Central Bucks West and now-Villanova guard Maddie Burke.

Burke was in a senior season that would finish with her claiming the Pennsylvania Class 6A Player of the Year title while Harter, a freshman, was in her first year of high school basketball. For Harter, who was a varsity starter at Souderton from Game 1, playing against Burke was her first real test.

Nearly three years later, it’s still something that Carroll looks back on as a perfect example of Harter’s tenacity on the court.

“She had to guard [Burke] twice that season, and [she’s] a really talented, established player: three years older, bigger, stronger, faster,” Carroll said. “It was her first real taste at the high school level, but she does not step down from a challenge. I mean, she really embraces it, puts everything into it.”

Harter grew up in a basketball family, and both her parents played the sport in college. Her father, Mark, played at Kutztown, and her mother, Angela, played at Cornell. Despite her parents’ history in the game, they did not push Harter toward the sport. Instead, Harter developed her own love of the game.

Angela Harter recalls when that love first started. When Casey was younger, she went to several Point Guard College camps, where attendees learn the mental parts of the game. For much of the camp, campers are in classrooms with notebooks and pens as they learn about developing basketball IQ.

After seeing Casey at the camps, Angela Harter knew that her daughter was committed to the sport.

“She loved it, and she just thought it was really great to learn more about the game itself,” Angela Harter said. “She totally bought into it, and I was like ‘Wow, that’s cool’ because she was young at the time … From that point forward, she seemed to really pick up interest and ask for more things.”

Harter continued to be committed to basketball as she got older. For much of her upbringing, she was coached both formally and informally by Angela, and she picked up parts of her mother’s mental approach to the game. At the same time, she started to gravitate toward point guard, the same position played by Mark at Kutztown.

Though there are similarities in Harter’s game and that of her parents, perhaps the most notable part is the one that is unique to her. Harter’s defense, which helped turn her into a Division I recruit, traces back to her freshman season and those matchups against players like Burke.

It was then, as a freshman looking to make an impact on the varsity team, that Harter committed to making defense her calling card.

“I had to be able to play defense, especially playing the minutes that I did,” Harter said. “There were really good players like Maddie Burke and other players in our conference I would have to guard and face up against.

“I feel like that’s when I started to take pride in [my defense] and just realize that I was good and that that was something I could do really well.”

Defense helped her contribute while she continued to get more comfortable on the offensive side of the ball. It also put her on the map as a college recruit, and at the end of her sophomore year, Harter was talking with several Patriot League schools.

That AAU season, while playing with the Comets program she has been a part of for the past four seasons, Harter had a breakout of sorts. She started adding new layers to her game. The new twists were on full display in her junior year at Souderton, when Harter started to score from the perimeter, something she hadn’t done much of as an underclassman.

For much of her freshman and sophomore seasons, Harter’s offensive game was limited to attacking the rim. When she added the ability to score from deep, she became a more versatile offensive threat.

“This past season, her junior year, teams were continuing to say, ‘If Casey is going to hurt us, it’s going to be from the perimeter,’ and she started to show that she was capable of doing that,” Carroll said.

As Harter’s offensive repertoire grew, so did the recruiting interest. By the end of her junior year, Carroll was hearing from Power 5 programs like Stanford and Northwestern. Though Northwestern was the latest entrant into Harter’s recruitment, it was the Wildcats who earned a commitment from the Souderton standout. The 5-foot-11 Harter announced her commitment to the Big Ten’s Northwestern last month.

Several factors played a part in Harter’s decision. She cited the family culture and her positive experience visiting the campus as big reasons. Another major reason: Northwestern is known as a defense-first program, and coach Joe McKeown prioritizes strong perimeter defenders in his recruiting efforts.

“He’s a defensive coach, and they’re kind of a defensive team,” Harter said. “They take pride in it, and they have certain defenses that I was really interested in. They thought it would fit well, and so it kind of all clicked.

“It definitely was just like the cherry on top almost. Everything else was good, and then we came up to start talking about [defense], and it was perfect.”

Before Harter takes her defensive talents to Evanston, Ill., she’s committed to continue building her offensive game ahead of her senior year. In addition to continuing to build her perimeter shot, Harter is working on her mid-range game.

She’s also working on playing a more physical style of basketball in order to prepare for life in the Big Ten.

“The Big Ten will be physical, and it’s really high-level basketball, so I think that will set me apart if I can finish through contact better.”

Harter is also preparing for a final run for a state championship. Souderton has made the PIAA tournament with Harter, and this season, she will look to win her first championship.

“It’s the same exact team from last year,” Harter said. “We lost nobody, and it’s also exciting that we all already experienced what we did. We experienced the state playoffs and districts and now we know what it’s like … Now we can get it done this year since we were there.”