Senior guard has ‘soft wisdom’
Jasmin Lawrence sets bar for peers with versatile role on Coach Brooks’ 12-6 team
Posted on January 28, 2008
She’s part of the “pipeline” of players who migrated from New York City to James Madison to play women’s basketball, but more importantly, she’s a mentor to her teammates.
Queens native Jasmin Lawrence anticipated she would go to school in state because she wanted to stay close to home, but the presence of a couple acquaintances at JMU changed her mind. The senior guard made a trip down to Harrisonburg by car on Sept. 11, 2003 — her mother wouldn’t let her fly because of the Twin Towers catastrophe two years earlier.
Lawrence always thought she would end up at Hofstra University, about a 20-minute drive from Queens on Long Island. But the influence of Lesley Dickinson, who grew up five minutes away from Lawrence and started the trend of NYC players migrating to JMU, had its effect.
“I think the first New York kid that we got was Lesley Dickinson,” Brooks says. “The success that she had here quickly spread back to New York, to the boroughs. They all knew each other, and it’s really helped the pipeline.”
Dickinson joined the University of Dayton women’s basketball coaching staff on July 15, 2007 after graduating from JMU, where she scored 1,616 points. That makes her third all-time behind Meredith Alexis and Tamera Young. Lawrence says it was it a “home atmosphere” playing with Dickinson and Shameena Felix, whom she also knew from NYC and graduated in 2007. She also played against junior forward Kisha Stokes and senior forward Jennifer Brown at city courts like “The Cage” and “The Rucker.” Lawrence played against Stokes three years straight at Madison Square Garden for the city championship, from 2002-04.
In 2006, just her second season at JMU, Lawrence would have to replace one of her fellow New Yorkers at a critical juncture. Lawrence was asked to step up for a depleted squad after Dickinson tore her meniscus days before the start of the CAA tournament, and Lawrence responded by hitting a game-winning shot that sent JMU to its first conference title game since 2001.
While she was filling a shooting guard role then, this year she was asked to be the primary point guard after freshman Dawn Evans developed a stress fracture in her left foot. Lawrence is coaching herself to fill that role.
“My personality is so laid back that I kind of have to learn to be a little more aggressive,” she says. “So at the point guard spot, I have to be a lot more vocal, which is a little bit outside of what I normally do.”
But Brooks says that Lawrence adapted to her new role so well that he decided to name her captain mid-season. She joined Brown and senior forward Tamera Young, who were both named captains at the beginning of fall semester. Brooks had never named a captain mid-season before, but Lawrence has started all 18 games for JMU this season after starting only four games prior to 2007-08.
“She’s done a fantastic job the last month or two of really helping the freshmen along,” Brooks says. “And that’s one of the reasons why I did something that I’ve never seen done, nor have I done it, when I named her captain a week and a half ago.”
He says Lawrence offers “soft wisdom” instead of barking orders on the court, and calls her a “quiet leader.” While she may not be the most vocal player on the court, she fills a unique role for many of her teammates who have come to rely on her for advice.
“She’s kind of like a big sister to everybody,” Stokes says. “Most of us on the team, if we have time we go to her for inspiration or just to get stuff off our chest.”
Lawrence majors in justice studies and plans to move back to New York upon graduating in May. She looks up to two siblings, but isn’t quite sure what her job aspirations are. Her 30-year-old brother is a police officer, and her 24-year-old sister attends Mercy College in New York, where she also pursues a justice studies degree.
