Weber Grad Kitey Chasing Championship with Emory

A few years back when Harry Kitey was an upperclassman at The Weber School and starting to get recruited by Division III basketball teams, he knew that Emory had a great program — maybe even one of the Top 10 in all Division III. But as he toured the school and met head coach Jason Zimmerman and the current team before ultimately committing to the Eagles, Kitey wasn’t necessarily banking on joining a team that was poised to host its first-ever Division III national championship trophy. But here the Eagles are, needing just one victory over the University of Mary Washington (Va.) on Sunday afternoon in downtown Indianapolis to cement their place in Atlanta sports history.

As thrilling as it is to be on the roster of a potential national championship team, it comes with an undeniable caveat for many players, ones who were accustomed to lighting up Friday night gymnasiums in high school: less playing time.

Earlier this decade, Kitey was “The Man” at Weber, pouring in over 1,000 career points in his sparkling four-year career that put him on the radar screen of DIII coaches across America, including those of Yeshiva and Johns Hopkins along with Emory. The Dunwoody native started from Day One in Weber’s frontcourt and before graduating in 2024 was a two-time GHSA A-D1 Region 6 All-Region First Team selection as well as a Georgia Basketball Coaches Association 2022-23 All-Star Selection.

Thus far, Kitey, now finishing up his sophomore year at Emory, has not had that kind of transformative impact for Zimmerman’s squad. After appearing in 8 games off the bench during his freshman campaign, Kitey has seen slightly more court time this winter, most notably when he came off the pine during the waning minutes of the Sweet 16 victory over Yeshiva at standing room-only Woodruff PE Center Arena on March 13 and during the momentous Final Four win over Christopher Newport University a week later.

Irrespective of the final outcome at Gainbridge Fieldhouse (home of the Indiana Pacers) Sunday afternoon, learning how to accept a supporting role, how to live vicariously through his teammates, how to wait ever-so-patiently for his number to be called has helped Kitey mature into the splendid young man that he is today.

“In life, not everything goes your way. You’re not always going to get the job you want. You’re not always going to get the role you want. You’re not going to get the responsibilities you want sometimes. Being able to make the most of what’s in front of you is really important,” shared Kitey when speaking to the AJT last week.

“I think growing up, part of my maturity as a person and as a basketball player, I would be very hard on myself. I would be getting very upset and letting these little things that I have no control over dictate my mood for the rest of the day or the rest of the week. I just kind of realized you can’t live life with that much stress.”

Though he has thus far played sparingly for Emory, the team-first Kitey brings non-stop energy and enthusiasm to the bench — a helpful pick-me-up for his Eagles teammates who are grinding through the gauntlet of a travel-intensive season.

“It really does make a difference when you have one or two guys — or in our case, the whole bench, really, I think we all do a really good job of it — being very engaged and very uplifting and very positive,” added Kitey, who’s starting to brace for his accounting final exams while also looking ahead to sun-splashed golf outings with friends this summer. “I think that’s a big part of our team. That’s a big part of why we’re having success.

“If I’m not on the court, I want to do something to be able to positively impact the team.”

Next season — perhaps a title-defending one for Emory —Kitey indeed projects to be on the court more. Emory is heavy on upperclassmen, with several players graduating next month, and Kitey has already shown flashes of his rebounding process, snagging 11 boards this year. Though he loves golf, the laser-sharp focus this summer will be on fine-tuning his hoops skillset and making sure he’s in tip-top condition when preseason starts this autumn.

“That’s the one thing I would say I kind of underestimated. Everyone I talked to said you have to be in great shape to play in college, and I thought I was in great shape. Once you get here, you understand what great shape really is,” acknowledged Kitey, who also played baseball and soccer at Weber. “I would say it [college basketball] is so much faster. In high school, everyone’s a step slower or multiple steps slower. And just the game moves at a different speed. Especially for us, we play very fast.”

He may or may not take the floor during Sunday’s nationally-televised (ESPN+) championship game that’s part of Final Four weekend — a grand and festive multi-day celebration of college basketball that this year promises to have a sizable Atlanta contingent with Emory students and alums visiting Indy. But for the rest of his life, the Weber alum can say that for at least one afternoon, he did layup lines on the same court that LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Trae Young have balled on.

“It’s going to be incredible,” said Kitey, who as a diehard Hawks fan appreciates the fact that both teams are peaking simultaneously. “I’m unbelievably excited. I know [for] everyone on the team, if we could play tonight, we would all jump on a bus and be there.

“This is a dream season that we’ve had so far and obviously we plan on getting back there, but you just never know for sure.”