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WILLIAMSBURG -- One of the most fun things about getting to know Laura Barhacs is listening to her speak.
"She went to say 'ego' one time," Kassidy McChessney recalled. "She said 'Eggo.'"
It's understandable. Hungarian is an unusual tongue even by European standards, and English still takes some getting used to for a girl from the suburbs of Budapest who just turned 16. But Barhacs and her Williamsburg Community High School teammates are finding her basketball skills have translated well to America.
Apparently hoops is a universal language.
"At first, it was very, very scary. But I'm lucky, because everyone here is so kind," said Barhacs, whose name is pronounced "BAR-hotch."
With the 6-foot-1 Barhacs in the paint, the Lady Pirates have gone from 5-17 last season to already posting nine wins by the midpoint of this campaign. They're in the running for a first-round home game when the District 6 Class 1A playoffs roll around next month.
"Her presence really helps a lot," first-year coach Jim Michelone said. "She is a great team player, and she is a super kid. She works with the other players and has helped the other kids."
Through 12 games, Barhacs is averaging 19.8 points, 10.9 rebounds, 2.4 blocked shots and 2.2 assists per contest, numbers made more impressive considering Williamsburg tries to keep the tempo slow to take full advantage of her skills.
Like many European basketball talents, Barhacs possesses a comfortable shooting touch out to 15 feet and beyond and can dribble the ball, but she also is a handful on the low block, where she's almost automatic if she catches the ball where she wants it.
"We first met at the community center to play basketball. Her skill level was much higher than I expected," McChessney said.
In a 54-41 win over visiting Glendale last week, she scored 18 points on 11 shots without attempting a free throw.
She also had 12 rebounds and two resounding blocks in that Inter-County Conference North game.
Barhacs scored 30 of Williamsburg's 47 in a game with Penns Valley over the holiday break and scored 20 of the Lady Pirates' 33 against Bellwood-Antis and Saint Francis University recruit Karson Swogger.
Facing teams like Penns Valley and Juniata Valley or athletes the caliber of Swogger is a big reason Barhacs took the opportunity to enroll in a student-exchange program and come to the United States. Barhacs has been playing basketball for the last few years and before coming here was part of the Megyeri Tigrisek Kos'rlabda Klub back in Hungary; in Europe, youth sports are sponsored by athletic clubs, not high schools.
She's familiar with this country, having come to Florida the previous six Christmases with her family -- she's become a Miami Dolphins fan and attended that team's playoff game with the Pittsburgh Steelers at Heinz Field a couple of weeks ago wearing aqua and orange.
"Basketball was my reason that I came here," Barhacs said. "I definitely want to come back here to finish college and play basketball. Now I am playing to get a scholarship and come back here.
"Somebody found my highlights on the internet, and they said, 'Hey, our high school needs a post player. You should come here as an exchange student.' I was like, 'Wow. An exchange student? I've never heard of an exchange student before. This could be fun.'"
She began the application process in January of 2016. Unfortunately for Barhacs, the family that originally approached her to get her interested in coming to the U.S. backed out, and she was left scrambling to get connected with someone else.
Enter Dustin and Cortney Martin, who were looking for an exchange student and stepped in to accept Barhacs.
"We were asked to do it last year, but we had just gotten married. This year, we were kind of late, because it was July. They said 'We want someone interested in (basketball).' We're big into basketball. We come to high school basketball games. We like the NBA. We like college. So they want to have the same interests as us," Cortney Martin said.
Dustin Martin actually was planning to coach the Lady Pirates this year, but a recent PIAA rule prohibited coaches from hosting exchange-student players in an effort to keep teams from effectively circumventing recruiting rules. Instead, he volunteers and keeps the scorebook.
Barhacs arrived about a week before school started.
"My first impression was 'She's big," said a smiling McChessney, a sophomore who, at 5-8, is the Lady Pirates' next tallest player.
Although Barhacs would like to stay in the United States and attend college here next year, rules of the exchange program dictate she has to go back to Dunakeszi, a city of about 42,000 just to the north of Budapest on the left bank of the Danube River, to finish her secondary schooling. Still, she's been learning a lot during her time here.
"I think it has helped me," Barhacs said. "Here, I have to be more tough. In Europe, basketball is more fancy. It's 'beautiful' basketball. Here, it's 'OK, go to the ground and fight.' Hey, it's a new thing. Everything can show me something."
Of course, it's been a learning experience off the court as well as on, in fact, maybe more so. While Barhacs said the culture and people aren't as different as one might believe, the language barrier can be a bigger challenge than she often faces on the low block.
Barhacs compared taking English courses here and back in Hungary to American students learning Spanish. She gets good-natured ribbing from her exchange parents and teammates about some of the words and her pronunciations -- w's in English get turned into v's as Barhacs enunciates them.
There was a recent exchange with Lady Pirate assistant Brady Appleman that left Barhacs and the Martins scratching their heads. Barhacs told the Martins that Appleman had called her a "silly moose" at practice.
That wasn't quite right.
"He said she played 'silky smooth,'" Dustin Martin said.
"I don't know. I was tired," Barhacs explained sheepishly.
Barhacs is trying to get as much of the American experience as she can while she is here. She was part of the school band in the fall, and she's taken a trip to New York City with another planned to Niagara Falls after the season. She's hoping to find a travel team or AAU program with which to work in the spring, but that might be difficult with many of the events coming after she returns to Hungary in June.
Still, it's been a great experience not only for Barhacs but the teammates who've gotten to know her.
"She's a really sweet, funny girl," McChessney said. "She's become one of my best friends. When she leaves, it's going to be hard on most of us."
Barhacs will take a lot of happy memories, though, of her year in a small, basketball-obsessed Blair County town.
"It's great," Barhacs said. "This is the best way to see a different country, a different culture."