With her hair put up in two high, short ponytails and her practice-uniform shorts worn long, Dalma Ivanyi fit right in with the rest of her Utah Starzz teammates Wednesday as she went through her first WNBA practice since returning from playing in Hungary.
But back home in Hungary, where she helped her professional club team to the Hungarian Cup plus the national championship, and to the elite eight of the European Championships, Ivanyi was looked upon as a rebel, someone with "an attitude," because of her Americanized appearance.
"They thought I was a little bit cocky or something, kind of like bringing attention to myself with all the baggy pants and the hairstyles," said Ivanyi, who was a Starzz rookie last year out of Florida International.
After the 1999 WNBA season, Ivanyi returned to Miami to finish school at FIU in December, then joined her Hungarian team for the second half of its season. There she played in about 30 games, starting at point guard and getting an average of 35 minutes a game of valuable experience to help her now as the Starzz try to get by the next month without gold-medal point guard Jennifer Azzi (broken bone in hand).
But after four-plus years in America, Ivanyi quickly found herself a foreign object in her own country. "They make fun of my hair because no one does it like this at home," she said. "They're so concerned. 'You're 24 years old, you're supposed to look like a 24-years-old-girl,'" Ivanyi said, laughing. "The first time I saw them, 'Oh, my gosh, you want to be 14 or 15.'
"It's just different. Here people don't really care — just if I feel comfortable, OK, but back at home, everybody is like, 'You must have got that in America.' That attitude."
In Hungary, players roll up the waistbands on their playing shorts to make them shorter and show a little leg. Ivanyi pulls the waistband down low, like Americans. "Back at home, everybody is, like, rolling it up, and I was the one putting it down," she said.
It was a good season, though, and her parents were close enough that they could drive to Ivanyi's games, especially the Hungarian championship. "They came to the final game. They saw the celebration," said Ivanyi, who left right afterward to fly to Utah.
She followed the Starzz's personnel moves via the Internet and knew that for two months she was the only true point guard on the roster following the expansion-draft loss robbed them of Debbie Black and Chantel Tremitiere, and the February knee injury in Poland to Krystyna Lara.
She also knew of the April 24 trade that brought internationally renowned Azzi to Utah. Ivanyi figured she could learn from Azzi. "I always liked her style," she said.
Ivanyi did not know until she arrived at Salt Lake International Tuesday that Azzi suffered a broken metacarpal in her right hand Sunday and will be out 4-6 weeks.
Ivanyi called that news "unfortunate. This team deserves to do good," she declared, looking at a strong roster and the Starzz's star-crossed history.
The Starzz, 1-1 in preseason play, host expansion Seattle Saturday at 7 p.m. at Dixie College's Burns Arena in St. George. The only Delta Center exhibition game will be Wednesday with Minnesota, which is also the opponent for Utah's regular-season home opener one week later. Utah opens the 2000 WNBA season at Los Angeles on May 31.
E-mail: lham@desnews.com