Off The Bench: Cate MacDonald of Dartmouth women’s basketball

Ivy League hoopsters are Division I athletes on the court and exceptionally accomplished and eclectic humans off it. Ivy Hoops Online presents the latest edition of our Off the Bench series that takes fans inside the stories that you might not otherwise know from the stands or through your screen.

Cate MacDonald  ‘27, a rising senior on the Dartmouth women’s basketball team from Lynnfield, Mass.,  shares a particularly inspiring journey to the Ivy League. A learning difference made school a challenge for her early on. Basketball was a comfort and a constant. With persistence and clarity about what she needs to thrive, there seems to be no stopping her.

Inside the Berry Sports Center on most fall afternoons, Cate MacDonald stands facing a giant whiteboard in assistant coach Shelby Boyle’s office. She draws what seems like the same marks, over and over again.

About to embark on her final season for the Big Green, MacDonald understands the concepts behind what she scribbles. She just needs to see them, write them and repeat them. Her teammates may absorb a new play on the fly, but MacDonald explains her style this way: “I am a visual learner. I have to write it out. I have to get the reps in. It’s how I memorize.”

It might look like any other coach-player interaction. But this is a learning strategy MacDonald has been refining since fourth grade, when she was first diagnosed with dyslexia. Long before she led her team in rebounding, MacDonald wrestled with how her own mind worked.

What felt like a hindrance is now a source of confidence.

Basketball had always been a safe place for MacDonald. Her mom coached the local high school team, and from third grade on, she tagged along to practices, looking up to the players who included her in their drills, and made her feel like she belonged.

School didn’t come so easily.

In the fourth grade, MacDonald did not immediately have language for what she experienced. She just knew she felt behind.

“I couldn’t really keep up in class,” MacDonald remembered.

MacDonald began leaving class regularly for specialized instruction, missing meaningful moments her classmates shared.

“Everyone talked about how great read-aloud was,” MacDonald remembered. “But I wasn’t there.”

One early memory lingers.

“All my friends loved ‘Harry Potter,'” MacDonald recalled, “I just couldn’t read it.”

MacDonald’s mom suggested the audiobook. But that wasn’t the point. By sixth grade, she was still reading at a second-grade level.

In fifth and sixth grade, MacDonald transferred to Landmark School, a day and boarding school in Beverly, Mass., that has served students in second through 12th grades contending with dyslexia and related learning challenges.

At Landmark, per MacDonald, everyone learned differently.

“Together, we each followed our own strategies for success. It changed how I saw myself. My brain is different. I see the world a little bit differently than the next person.”

For the first time, MacDonald found something she hadn’t realized she needed: a community.

“We had all struggled with this in our public schools, and we were all together to find strategies that worked.”

MacDonald continues, “I’ve never gone along the A-to-B track. I embrace my extra steps, because I learn from each of them. I will not master a play the first time it is introduced, but my coaches and I know that I will, if I get the reps. I have to get the reps.”

In basketball, and in her studies, MacDonald’s persistence is being rewarded. The same skills she developed in the classroom—patience, repetition, problem-solving—now define her as a teammate. The 6-foot-1 MacDonald averaged 28.1 minutes per game with 23 starts as a junior in 2025-26, more than doubling her scoring average to 8.8 points per contest after not starting at all as in her first two seasons at Dartmouth.

“I might not be the best player on our team,” she said, “but I know how to put in the work, because that is always how I had to operate.”

The best news of all—this rising senior, who is majoring in Government Modified with Economics, absolutely loves to read.

This summer, the girl who couldn’t finish “Harry Potter” has an internship at the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. She is reading policy briefs, bringing legislation to Capitol Hill and reviewing government reports for lobbyists. She is knee-deep in documents that once would have seemed impenetrable. Her previous college summers were equally demanding and, she said, “just very cool.” (She researched credit card benefits at Airlines for America and gathered affordable housing perspectives on behalf of the office of U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.

MacDonald’s preparation for policy meetings looks a lot like the approach she developed years ago. She starts with summaries. She looks up unfamiliar terms. She pieces ideas together.

“I’m not going to take the information on the page and know what they’re talking about out of the gate,” she said. “I have to go at the material from different directions.”

MacDonald is grateful for professors who will meet over coffee to go over a paper. Teammates who review complicated notes together. The Writing Center. Accommodations that allow her to demonstrate what she knows. And yes, coach who she can count on to stand in front of a whiteboard for as long as it takes.

MacDonald hopes to return to Washington after graduation, perhaps in government affairs, perhaps on Capitol Hill. She is still discovering which particular arena of public policy feels most like home. What she’s not questioning is whether or not she belongs in classrooms and meetings with decisionmakers.

MacDonald drew a parallel between the basketball court and government halls.

“I’m used to running through plays in a fast-paced environment,” she said. “You have to be able to get things on the fly, communicate with different people and work together. It might take me a little longer. I might take a different path. But my different path is just as good.”