Dezerea Duckworth, her Bryant Lady Hornets teammates and coach Brad Matthews may always wonder what might have been. What would the 2013-14 basketball season have held for them had Duckworth not suffered a season-ending injury in the very first game? After all, the senior was coming off a junior year in which she led the team in scoring, rebounding and assists.
“She could be a lockdown defender too,” Matthews related. “She’s so strong. She did so much for us. When she went down, it took us a while to figure out who was going to do what. I think that’s really a testament to her and how much she meant to our team.”
Duckworth admits too that she has worried that any chance to play college basketball were dashed as well.
But the Lady Hornets regrouped and qualified for the Class 7A State Tournament and Duckworth regrouped, went to work and, on Thursday, May 15, signed a letter of intent to continue her education and basketball career on scholarship at William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa.
“I was searching and asking Coach Matthews for help and asking him if he knew any coaches,” Duckworth recalled. “I told him I’d be working hard, trying to get back. He told me he would help me and it just happened.”
How did an NAIA school in Iowa find out about her?
“Honestly, I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think it was God. They contacted me. They sent me letters telling me they were interested. They wanted me to come visit the school so I visited and they offered me a scholarship.
“It was a nice school,” she added. “It wasn’t too big. It wasn’t too small. I really liked the players on the team. It was a nice campus. It was pretty. It just fit me. It was for me.”
There was a JUCO in Florida that expressed interest too. “But I really didn’t like it,” Duckworth said. “It was just too much, too busy.”
“We first found out about her through a scouting service that had her information,” said Mike Brown, the head coach for the William Penn Lady Statesmen. “We just sort of contacted her from that and then took it from there. We were able to get some game film on her through her high school coaching staff and we were impressed by her.
“We were really looking to find some high energy kids for this year’s class and she looked as though she fit the bill there,” he continued. “We also like the fact that her coaches mentioned that she was a tireless worker. We also enjoyed seeing that she could handle the ball fairly well and seemed to have good speed about her. We play fast and we play a lot of man-to-man defense here, so we thought her game would help our program out in many ways.”
“Dezerea’s a tremendous young lady,” Matthews stated. “I’ve been around good girl players, good guy players and I think she understands herself, her strengths and weaknesses better than any kid I’ve ever been around. She goes to work on those weaknesses.
“She’s a great teammate, a great person, comes from a good family,” he continued, referencing her parents Earlesha and Darren Duckworth, her brother Desmond and little sister Destine. “She deserves this. The horrible injury she had in our first game of the year, as hard as she worked.
“They’re going to get a kid that’s going to be dedicated to help them in whatever way that is,” the coach said of WPU. “Whatever way she can help them, she will. She’s so easy to coach. I can’t speak highly enough about Dezerea Duckworth.”
Of the injury, Duckworth said, “It just gave me motivation. It made me work harder. It made me appreciate the game of basketball more than I did before I tore my ACL.”
But hard work wasn’t something new for her, Matthews insisted.
“In junior high, she was all about scoring around the basket,” he explained. “The post players in junior high that are 5’8”, 5’9” are now 6’0” or 6’1” (in high school). She had to adapt her game. I think that’s what she did probably better than any kid I’ve seen, male or female. She made herself a good shooter.
“That’s difficult to do when you get to 10th grade,” Matthews noted. “You don’t see that happen a lot, a kid makes herself a good shooter. That’s one of the sad things about her tearing her ACL. People didn’t get to see how hard she’d worked to improve her shot. She has a lot more to grow coming off this injury.”
Brown told Duckworth he wanted her to come in and play right away, she related.
“I’ve been working out hard, every day. I’ve been training. I’ll be going up there during the summer and working out with them.”
Tonya
Wont God Do IT