“In a situation like that, I thought I’d learn a lot.”
She has — in more ways than she ever imagined.
“I’ve learned how to make elephant ears and funnel cakes and caramel apples,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve cut up potatoes to make french fries. I worked at a cart selling ice cream and had fun working at a pretzel stand, too.”
And if you scrape away all that fried dough and powdered sugar, you’ll see the healthy sustenance Smith has gotten from all of this. It’s made for some very hands-on lessons in resilience, back bone, hard work and especially holding on tight to your dreams.
Smith — a political science major who will graduate in the spring and hopes to end up in law school — is the only senior on the women’s basketball team at Wilberforce, a school with a proud, venerable history and a present-day financial crisis.
The 155-year-old private school — the first U.S. college owned and operated by blacks — has a reported $24 million in debt.
Over the past year the school had periods where it was unable to pay bills or employees for months at a time. Payments to professors retirement funds were suspended and the school’s enrollment — over 800 a decade ago — has dipped to 583 students.
“It’s definitely had an effect on sports, too,” said Geoff Warren, the school’s athletics director, its men’s basketball coach and now one of just two people left in the entire athletics department.
Since last year men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s track and golf have all been dropped. Other coaches have been let go and budgets have been pared to the bone.
In many ways the bottom-line problems also carry over to the box scores. Going into tonight’s games with next-door rival Cedarville, the Bulldogs men’s and women’s teams have lost a combined 47 of 55 games this season.
The men are 5-21. The women, 3-26.
And yet if you put an elephant ear up to the situation, you don’t hear the kind of complaining you’d expect.
“I’m just thankful we’re able to have a season this year,” Warren said.
Iesha Gray, the former Wright State player who now coaches the Wilberforce women, agreed: “While some people are like ‘Oh no, we’re in real financial straits — what are we gonna do?’ we try to focus on the positive. Rather than being burdened by what we can’t control, we try find ways to make it work.
“That means you have to be a lot more creative when it comes to fundraising. I’ve been here three years and our first two, my players and I worked at Cedar Point amusement park on weekends from August into October. This past year we switched to Kings Island.
“We work in food service and at the concession stands. We volunteer for everything to make money.”
The men’s team worked at Cincinnati Bengals games, serving as everything from ushers to on-the-field security.
Warren said he also tries to get his NAIA team into a “guarantee game” at an NCAA Division I school each season. A couple of years ago the Bulldogs played Miami in an exhibition game and this season they traveled to Youngstown State for a regular season game.
The women, Smith said, also did a letter writing campaign — contacting family, friends, alumni, anybody they thought would listen — and they got a response when people learned a little about them.
Winning in other ways
Warren led his Cleveland prep team — Cathedral Latin High — to three straight appearances in the state tournament and was the tournament MVP in 1979.
After playing collegiately at Kent State, he coached at Cuyahoga Community College, where he guided two future NBA players — Ben Wallace and Trevor Ruffin. After that he coached pro teams for five seasons in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia before returning to aid Pat Tramble with the Central State women’s team for two seasons.
Seven years ago he moved across U.S. 42 to the men’s program at Wilberforce and this season, along with being the only men’s coach and the AD, he drives the team’s van on occasion, acts as the department’s secretary ... and teaches seven classes a week at the school.
After finishing at WSU, Gray — who said former Raiders women’s coach Bridgett Williams and her husband Kevin ended up being “huge mentors” in her life — spent three seasons as an assistant at Heidelberg, then three years ago, at age 25, she took over the Wilberforce program.
Like Warren she is yet to have a winning season, but there have been victories small and big, both on the court and off.
Two weeks ago, Andrecia Smith set a Wilberforce record — making nine 3-pointers — to finish with 39 points against Mount Vernon Nazarene. And on the men’s side, 6-foot-3 junior Chris Olifoye — who’s averaging 22.7 ppg — is fourth in the nation in NAIA Division II scoring.
Off the court Warren said he has graduated 90 percent of his players who stayed with the program. Gray said her players combined for a 3.3 team GPA the past semester.
Making strides
Late in the first half the other night, the Wilberforce women fell behind Malone by 22 points. But with just under 10 minutes left in game, they had fought back to tie it up, 60-60. They slipped behind by six again, then clawed back to take a three-point lead, only to fade in the final minute and lose, 80-76.
“We don’t have a lot of experience on how to close out a victory, but I admire the way the kids never quit fighting,” Gray said afterward. “At the beginning of the season, if we went down 20, it would have turned into 30 and maybe 50. We’re making strides.”
To keep doing so though, the Bulldogs need more support, both personnel-wise and especially financially.
Warren said he might even try to call on old friends, be it former players like Wallace or his childhood friend, Charles Oakley, who played 20 years in the NBA and now is an assistant coach with the Charlotte Bobcats.
With that he reached for a photo he has displayed in his office. It showed him alongside Oakley and Michael Jordan, who was holding his then-young son, Jeff, now a college player himself.
Smiling as he pointed to the other two men in the photo, Warren said quietly: “Those guys did a lot of things in their careers.”
Yet, as you looked at the photo, you might say of the three, he is certainly doing the most ... with the least.
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