Sarah Mortensen has starred at Long Island Lutheran

Sarah Mortensen gazed out the window of the plane, looking down at the ocean that soon would separate her from home.

“It was weird to say goodbye to my usual world,” Mortensen said. “But at the same time, this is what I had been waiting for this. This was my dream.”

The eight-hour flight across the Atlantic Ocean in September took her from her native Denmark to New York. More than 3,000 miles away from family, friends, and familiarity, the one constant in her new world was basketball.

Mortensen, a 6-1 senior, played on club teams and on the national team in Denmark. But with no high school basketball played in the country, she wanted a platform where she could more readily showcase her talent to college coaches in the United States. So she came to Long Island Lutheran, one of the premier girls basketball programs in New York, as a foreign exchange student.

“I knew some people over there and a couple of coaches said there’s a kid in Denmark that’s interested in coming over,” Lutheran coach Rich Slater said. “So I reached out. She wanted the challenge. She wanted to be pushed. She wanted to play at a high level.”

Which is exactly what she has done, establishing herself as one of the top girls basketball players on Long Island. She’ll look to lead LuHi to a fourth straight Federation championship and got off to a good start by scoring 13 points in a 41-40 victory over St. Anthony’s Friday in the semifinals in Albany.

Mortensen is averaging 19.2 points this season, and doing so at a highly efficient rate. The consistency of her shot, aided by a quick release that barely gives defenders a chance to react, combined with a variety of step-back maneuvers and the ability to play both inside and out, has helped her shoot just more than 57 percent from the field.

Her biggest adjustments on the court has been on the defensive end. Mortensen was raw defensively coming from Denmark, where she says defenses play strictly zone. But at LuHi, she learned how to play man-to-man, how to properly close out, and how to take a charge. In the victory over St. Anthony’s, Mortensen made a huge defensive play, hurrying a layup attempt in the final seconds to preserve the victory.

“She’s the most fundamentally sound player I have ever coached,” said Slater, who recalled how Mortensen had a 40-point game on just 19 shots. “Plus she’s humble and appreciative. She understands this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing and she doesn’t take it for granted. After every practice, she thanks me. I tell her, ‘Stop thanking me! We should be thanking you. You shouldn’t be thanking us.’”

Mortensen helped fill a void and fit in seamlessly at LuHi, which was ushering in a new era after Boogie Brozoski moved on to the University of Michigan. Mortensen, the Crusaders’ leading scorer, now is looking to help extend the dynasty that Brozoski helped build.

“At first Sarah was quiet and seemed really nervous coming to a whole new country where nobody knew her,” said Grace Stone, Mortensen’s teammate on Long Island Lutheran. “But she was so kind and polite. And as soon as she stepped on the court, she was confident.”

Mortensen, who’s fluent in English, also has thrived in the classroom. She has maintained a 3.75 GPA, according to Slater, and hopes to pursue a career in engineering.

Her main adjustment off the court has been being away from family. She keeps in touch with her parents and younger sister in Denmark via FaceTime, and speaks regularly to her older brother, Daniel, a 6-9 forward at Wright State University in Ohio.

The separation, though, has been somewhat alleviated by the care she receives from her host family, Mark and Melissa Halperin, who she lives with in Jericho. Mortensen has become like a big sister to the Halperin’s daughters, Amy, 14, and Carly, 12. “The younger one is really into sports so she has been to a lot of the games, and the older one is sweet so we talk a lot,” Mortensen said. “They are my second family now.”

Shortly after stepping onto U.S soil for the first time, Mortensen received her first cultural lesson from the Halperins. They taught her how to properly fold a slice of New York pizza. She initially took the tip of the slice and bent it back toward the crust.

“I said, ‘You’ve got to learn how to eat the pizza,’” Mark said with a laugh. “She goes, ‘Why? This works great.’ Now I think she holds it the more traditional New York way. She’s become a connoisseur of all foods.”

Mortensen, who has taken a liking to American fast food, agreed. “Here,” she joked, “it’s a lot harder to stay healthy.”

But her new diet has in no way slowed her on the court. College coaches took quick notice of her unique skill set and began calling the Halperin home to inquire.

“Lots of interest from a lot of schools,” Mark said. “That part was a little overwhelming in the beginning. It got very busy, very quickly. But she’s as good a player that I’ve seen play high school basketball around here. So I see why coaches were interested.”

Mortensen narrowed her choices and, last week, accepted an offer from the University of Miami.

“It really is like a dream come true,” said Mortensen, who hopes to play in the WNBA and professionally in Europe. “But now I want to work even harder. It has motivated me because it showed me that everything I have done has paid off. So if I continue, what will happen then? I have to keep dreaming.”