City of Basketball Love

Andrew Robinson (@adrobinson3)
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Atlee Vanesko is a connoisseur’s type of basketball player.

The word “Chef” appears on the Westtown senior’s Instagram page and it’s a really apt way to describe how the guard approaches the game of basketball by blending and balancing the ingredients of the roster around her while adding just the right amount of kick herself. A couple lines under that is where Vanesko lists where she has decided to continue serving up basketball culinary next year at the highest level of Division I.

Plenty of connoisseurs at the college level put their bids in, but it was Ohio State that got the chef when Vanesko pledged to join the Buckeyes back in July.

“I play very differently compared to other people who get recruited at this high of a level,” Vanesko said. “I’m not much of a scorer, people like to say I’m a ‘glue player,’ people need me on the team to facilitate and I’m pretty good at playing with good players so when I saw that high level of a program took interest in me, I took it like ‘oh, I guess I’m pretty good at what I do.’ 

“They continued to show interest in me, they came to all my games, the coaches are super cool and that relationship aspect was really important to me. I talk to the assistant coach every day, I talk to the head coach once a week. I felt very welcomed and comfortable right off the rip, so that was huge for me.”

Since she announced her commitment publicly on July 18, just before the final AAU event of her Philly Rise career, Vanesko has been here, there and seemingly everywhere playing hoops through the summer and early fall. She’s gone from repeating as Chosen League champion in the city, playing in New York’s Dyckman Basketball league, taking part in the Elite 20 Invitational to earning an invite to the Wooten Camp in late September.

CoBL was able to catch up with Vanesko at the start of October, about a month away from the beginning of her last preseason at Westtown, to break down her college commitment. The 5-foot-11 guard, rated a four-star recruit and the No. 6 combo guard in the 2026 class by 24/7 Sports, naturally had plenty of college programs after her but she settled on a final five of Ohio State, Stanford, Miami, Indiana and Virginia Tech.

“Naturally, I kind of started figuring out what I wanted and being completely honest, I think some of those schools started to find what they wanted so it was kind of a two-way type of deal,” Vanesko said. “Going into the summer and even by the end of last school year, it was always those five. I didn’t really talk to that many other schools because I was big on, if you show interest in me, then I’ll show interest in you and it was consistently those schools that did.

“I didn’t like picking and choosing when you wanted to talk to me, I was really picky if I’m going to be honest and those schools consistently showed effort and Ohio State was the one that consistently showed the most effort.”

Ohio State, which went 26-7 and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament last season, offered Vanesko on their first call back in April 2024. She knew early on that she wanted to play in either the Big Ten or the ACC, so Ohio State checked that box and there was another layer the Buckeyes offered.

Kevin McGuff, who has led Ohio State since 2013, has turned Ohio State into a yearly contender in the Big Ten and a regular in the NCAA Tournament. Whether it was Iowa’s recent run or the conference expansion adding some west coast powers last year however, OSU doesn’t always get that same reputation on a national level which drew Vanesko in.

“I wanted to go to an established program and I wanted to go to a winning program,” Vanesko said. “I still wanted a team that had that chip on their shoulder and was seen as an underdog and especially in the Big Ten now with USC and UCLA, they still had a little something to prove and I wanted to be a part of that.”

There was mutual interest right away, although Vanesko admitted the idea of going out to Ohio wasn’t necessarily something she envisioned for herself until she went out there.

Vanesko, who hails from Ocean City, NJ but lives on campus at Westtown during the school like most students at the boarding school in West Chester, explained she was looking for something a little bigger after attending a smaller but tight-knit high school. Westtown doesn’t have football but Ohio State sure does and both Vanesko’s unofficial and official visits coincided with Buckeye home games.

“As soon as I stepped foot on campus in Columbus, I went last year on an unofficial and it was their first home football game when they were playing Marshall, Marshall was awful at football but I remember going to that game it was like the most electrifying thing, it felt like everyone in the whole world was in that stadium,” Vanesko said. “You’re right outside Columbus so you have that college town feel and I felt like ‘I want to be here.’”

Vanesko went back for her official visit this August, when Ohio State hosted then top-ranked Texas in a rematch of the 2024 national championship game. She’d also brought along her older siblings, Olivia and Jackson, and they proved to be pretty quick sells too.

“It felt like the stadium was literally shaking, they’d just played each other in the national championship so it was the most intense game ever,” Vanesko said. “My sister goes to Miami and my brother plays baseball at Bryant and they both felt like ‘I can’t imagine you being in Ohio out of all these places.’ We came out of my visit and my sister applied for grad school at Ohio State and my brother wants to try and transfer to play baseball there, they loved it as much as I do, if not more.”

Actually telling Ohio State she was coming turned into a bit of an adventure. As her Rise team was waiting to fly out of Kentucky and up to Chicago for the final live period of the summer, Rise coach Tony Lee asked Vanesko when she was going to make her commitment.

Thinking about it and knowing the upcoming live period would mean no contact with college coaches, Vanesko decided she wanted to do it before the EYBL championships started. The only problem was the flight that was supposed to bring her mom, Megan, out to Chicago had been cancelled and she’d be delayed from arriving until the no contact period had started.

“I knew what I wanted to do but I didn’t know if my mom wanted me to do it right then,” Vanesko said. “I think I knew what I wanted to do right away actually but my mom wanted me to see it out, to go visit other schools, all that and I was totally fine with that. There was really no rush but you also want to play freely especially for your last tournament.

“My mom didn’t go to Kentucky, I thought I’d wait but her flight got cancelled going to Chicago so I called her from the hotel lobby in Chicago and said “I need to commit,’ and she said ‘this is really impulsive,’ but I said ‘I don't care.’”

Vanesko relented a little bit, letting her mom make a few calls to make sure everything was lined up with her scholarships and any potential NIL opportunities but it was going to happen before communication shut down. All that was left was making it social media official, so Vanesko called OSU assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Jalen Powell to lock in her commitment and go public with it.

“I asked if they could do a graphic I could post,” Vanesko said. “She said they already had it done, she was just waiting for me to call and tell them I was coming.” 

While she became one of the best players nationally in her class in basketball, Vanesko’s athletic path started out in a different sport. Her older sister played lacrosse in high school and her grandmother and mom played lacrosse at Penn State - Atlee joked “they’re about to write me out of the will” for choosing a rival Big Ten school - so that’s where she also started.

Playing midfield, which in lacrosse puts an equal emphasis on offense and defense, Vanesko started developing the complimentary style of game she’d bring to the hardwood. It was a little bit of a rebellious streak that pushed her toward what had started as her secondary sport.

“I played defense and I was a very good passer, I honestly was better at lacrosse than I was basketball but I fell in love with basketball because my mom played lacrosse and I didn’t like the fact she knew what she was talking about,” Vanesko said with a laugh. “That’s what pushed me to play basketball more.”

Vanesko has never been afraid of a challenge. She’s made a habit of showing up anywhere, anytime around the Philly area to play and her willingness to go up against great players is part of the reason she chose Westtown, the Moose routinely playing a loaded national schedule, and played for Philly Rise on the EYBL circuit.

She’s had top-tier teammates along the way, a majority of them going on to play at the Division I level or bound to do so within the next few years, so she never felt compelled to be the star of her team but instead star in her role. Whether it was some of her early teammates from back in sixth grade like Olivia Vukosa or Jessie Moses or those who’d come on later like Jordyn Palmer, Jada Lynch, Olivia Jones and Addy Nyemchek among plenty of others, Vanesko always found herself surrounded by the right ingredients that needed someone to chef it up a little.

“I realized not all of us can score the ball, but they’re not the loudest on the court – and I love them – but they all couldn’t guard one through five so I progressively found things other people couldn’t do and got good at those things and that got me better at working with people who could score the ball or who were bigger names,” Vanesko said. “I was perfectly fine with not dropping 20 points or not grabbing 100 rebounds, I’d rather do the little things because I know good recruiters will see those things. I may not be at the top of the stat sheet but I’d do the little things to get that other person to the top of the stat sheet.”

This year’s Buckeyes team will be on the younger side, with eight players carrying either sophomore, redshirt freshman or true freshman eligibility. The headliner is sophomore Jaloni Cambridge, last season’s Big Ten Freshman of the Year and a preseason All-Big Ten selection this year.

The fact that Cambridge plays the same point guard position as Vanesko is anything but an issue for the Westtown senior. Vanesko spoke glowingly of Cambridge’s game and said the OSU staff already talked about ways they could get both guards on the floor together.

“They’ll play two point guards at once so I think my first year they’ll have me learning a lot off what she does and taking advantage of my time with her,” Vanesko said. “They want me to shoot more than I have in high school, they want me to take on more of a scoring role. Being more of a bigger guard, especially in the Big Ten, I think will be helpful but mainly enhancing the traits I have now and continuing to get better throughout the time I’m there.”

One thing Vanesko said she found really beneficial throughout her recruiting process was actually going and visiting prospective schools. Just because she didn’t necessarily see herself in Ohio, she didn’t turn down Ohio State and her two visits were pretty integral in her final decision and it’s something she’s been harping on with Palmer as the highly-touted 2027 forward begins the final part of her own recruitment.

“I wasn’t expecting myself to go to a school like that until I went there and I realized ‘I love this,’” Vanesko said. “I tell my teammates now, you gotta go visit these schools because you really have zero clue what you’re going to want until you do.

“And, God forbid, you get hurt and you can’t play basketball, you’re going to want a school you’re going to be happy at if you don’t have a sport.”

She may not often be a top scorer for her teams, but Vanesko is more than capable of going off if needed. She’s an outstanding shooter, the guard confidently said she’d put herself up against anyone in the country and while she may not be a high-volume shooter, “when I shoot it, I usually make it.”  

There were quite a few times last year where she backed up her ability to put up points when some of her Westtown teammates were out injured and Vanekso feels like having a feel for when she needs to score is an area of her game that’s improved in recent years. It’s also something she might have to do more of this year, especially after Moses transferred from Westtown to IMG Academy over the summer. Westtown has brought in some high-level new faces but the group still hasn’t really shared a court together much even with the amount of pick-up and open gym runs they do as a team.

If anything, it’s a group that could use the right chef.

“I’m really excited to play against amazing players,” Vanesko said.  “I think that’s the part people don’t take advantage of enough. Here at Westtown, that’s something that’s helped me but now I’m going to be in the Big Ten and playing against the best every single game and in practice so I’m just excited to get better and play against people I’ve been looking up to.”