Island Girl

By Glenn Nelson
HoopGurlz Publisher
Posted Mon, 10/15/2007 - 07:04 Eight years ago, Shenneika Smith arrived in the U.S. as a Jamaican soccer player; just look at her now.

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STORY & PHOTOS BY GLENN NELSON

BROOKLYN, N.Y. - There was a basketball court in front of Shenneika Smith's house in the Waterford district of Portmore, just east of Kingston on the Jamaican coast. It's just that Smith, accomplished enough to be ranked 10th in HoopGurlz's Super Sixty for 2009, never played basketball there.

"When the kids came to play basketball," Smith says, "I told them, 'Get out, get out. I want to play soccer.' "

Basketball was far from her mind. Smith's father, Rohan, was a top footballer in Jamaica. Shenneika Smith was following in his footsteps. She was stopped dead in those tracks eight years ago.

Soccer is more of a Long Island thing, and Smith, her father, older brother and sister moved to Brooklyn eight years ago. In Brooklyn, they play basketball.

Smith looked for a local soccer team, but there was none. So she started tagging along with her older brother, Cornell, to Winthrop Park in East Flatbush. And she started dribbling - not with her feet, but with her hands.

"All I did with dribble," Smith says. "I'd watch Michael Jordan on TV, then go dribble and practice his moves. Dribbling is what I knew how to do. I had no jump shot. I just dribbled."

Smith dribbled her way through Team Marbury, the Stephon Marbury sponsored team out of Coney Island, and the Brooklyn Ravens. Her basketball evolution took a decided turn, she says, the day Apache Paschall spied her at the Slam Jam tournament, taking on Kia Vaughn, one of Paschall's players at St. Michael's who now is a star at Rutgers. To apreciate the Herculean task Smith had adopted, consider that Vaughn is a rugged 6-foot-4, while Smith is game and athletic at 6-1, some in Brooklyn call her "Olive Oyl," after Popeye's rail-thin cartoon girlfriend.

Paschall nevertheless was determined and convinced Smith's family to allow her to attend St. Michael. She also suited up for Paschall's club team, Exodus NYC. Between the two teams, Smith put up some 100 shots a day during drills and the dribbler also became a shooter.

"At first, I was hesitant about taking shots in a game," Smith says. "Now I feel comfortable and confident about shooting. I feel that I can shot pretty much whever I want."

The result is a player who can be a bona fide offensive weapon at the next level. Smith is long, quick, skilled and fearless to the basket, and gets great lift on her jump shot. Her school list currently consists of Miami, Middle Tennessee, Syracuse and Tennessee, but is almost certain to swell as this year progresses.

Smith has made other, necessary adjustments. She arrived from Jamaica for the first time in a t-shirt; her mother, who'd moved ahead to New York, promptly bought her a jacket. She's also gotten over the shock and awe of witnessing her first snow fall, something she'd only seen on television before. Smith used to return to Jamaica every summer, but has spent the past two summers playing club basketball. She also still keeps up on her dribbling, with her feet, that is, sometimes during basketball practice. But she practices far more with her hands these days.

Shenneika Smith shrugs. "I'm a basketball player now," she says.

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Glenn Nelson is the founder and publisher of HoopGurlz.com. He is a member of the McDonald's All-American Selection Committee and SportsShooter.com (Click for Porfolio), Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Photoshop Professionals, National Press Photographers Association and Online News Association. Glenn also founded and coached the Dragons and Northwest HoopGurlz select girl's basketball teams and previously was the editor-in-chief at Scout.com and a longtime, national-award-winning basketball columnist and writer for The Seattle Times. His work has appeared in several books and national magazines. He is co-author of "Rising Stars: The Ten Best Players in the NBA" (Rosen Publishing, 2002). For more on Glenn's World, click here. Glenn can be reached at glenn@hoopgurlz.com.

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