Senior citizens
Experience leads team with CAA title hopes
By Brian Hansen, sports editor
Posted on December 7, 2006

After a 24-7 campaign last season that saw the JMU women’s basketball team finish as the runner-up in the Colonial Athletic Association, coach Kenny Brooks’ players thought he was the favorite to win CAA Coach of the Year.

When the award went instead to another coach, his players decided to make him their coach of the year. The team put together a makeshift certificate and gave it to Brooks on the bus ride home, to show their appreciation.

“In every way possible, Coach Brooks has helped us improve,” senior point guard Andrea Benvenuto said. “He’s pushed us, he’s taught us discipline and he’s instilled us with confidence.”

For Benvenuto and her fellow seniors, it has been a long road to get where they are now. In 2003-’04, Brooks brought in five players for his inaugural recruiting class. Those five included Benvenuto, center Meredith Alexis, guard Lesley Dickinson, forward Shirley McCall and guard Shameena Felix.

Four of those players have been starters for the last two seasons, including Alexis and Dickinson, who have each started more than 90 games since their freshmen years.

“We kind of got thrown in here freshman year and didn’t really know what to expect,” Alexis said. “Coach Brooks stuck with us and we just kept growing every year, until we reached where we are now.”

After years of growing pains, now the Dukes are serious contenders to end Old Dominion’s 15-year run as CAA champions. The Dukes lost out to the Monarchs last season in a down-to-the-wire championship game.

“I’ve seen each one of them grow each season,” Brooks said. “Each and every one of them has improved, and they’ve really worked hard. They’ve been a special bunch.”

Brooks has taken a team that went 13-18 in its first year to a team that won 24 games and garnered a WNIT bid last season.

They’ve not only grown as a team, but as players.

“You don’t want to take anything away from the players who have come before them,” Brooks said. “But you look at what they’ve done and you can see that they are special. They’ve broken a lot of records.”

In her junior season, Alexis had already broken JMU’s all-time rebounding record and stood to become the first Duke to grab 1,000 career boards Wednesday night against Clemson. She had 991 entering the game.

“There have certainly been a lot of great post players to play here,” Brooks said. “But I can’t imagine any of them being that much better, if at all, than Meredith.”

Alexis is the 22nd player in school history to score 1,000 points, sitting at 1,260. Dickinson was the 21st. She’s scored 1,308 for her career and McCall sits at 907 points and should surpass the 1,000-point plateau later this season.

Benvenuto’s 411 assists places her sixth in JMU history.

The players credit most of their success to the coach who had faith enough in them to start them all since their freshman year.

“He knew from the start that we were going to be something special,” Alexis said. “He has confidence in us and through that, [he] has instilled us with confidence.”