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[Elena] Delle Donne left in the middle of the night, quietly. She waited until her roommate, who was also a basketball player, fell asleep. She had a friend from home pick her up. By the time she arrived at her parents' house in Delaware, it was 7 a.m. and pouring. Her mother opened the door and said, "What are you doing here?" And Elena was crying too hard to explain.
"I always felt like I was kind of following the path everybody told me to go on and that I needed to do," Delle Donne says now, as it starts to rain outside her apartment. "And I think that's why I went through burnout and went through what I did, because finally I was like, well, what do I want to do? Let me step back. Do I really want to do this, or do I want to be something else?"
Her coach, Geno Auriemma, called immediately. He told her mother to bring Elena back to school. He'd seen this before -- homesickness, nerves. But Elena's mother knew something about this was different. "I can see it in her face," she told him.
They were in for one awkward summer. The Auriemmas and the Delle Donnes had vacation homes in Avalon, on the Jersey shore. One afternoon, Elena rode her bike the few blocks to the coach's house. They sat and talked for hours. He suggested she come back to school, no basketball. She stuck with her no. Auriemma seemed sad. "He thought my dreams were to be the greatest basketball player to ever walk the planet and to win championships," she says. "But that just wasn't my dream at that time." Auriemma's wife, Kathy, who had overheard the whole conversation, finally came in. She said, "Geno, she's not going to play for you. Let her go home."
Auriemma had been so eager to coach her. "It's very rare to find someone who is that tall and can handle the ball, pass the ball, shoot it like she does," he tells me. Can you blame him for being upset about losing a player with those abilities? The way she'd linger in the air while taking a 3-point shot, the way she'd cut and glide around the floor. "Those are all things that when she was in high school you didn't see much of," he says. "This feeling that someone like her comes along once in a great while. People had not seen this in the past."
Click [HERE] for the complete article "The Audicity of Height" about EDD.
"I always felt like I was kind of following the path everybody told me to go on and that I needed to do," Delle Donne says now, as it starts to rain outside her apartment. "And I think that's why I went through burnout and went through what I did, because finally I was like, well, what do I want to do? Let me step back. Do I really want to do this, or do I want to be something else?"
Her coach, Geno Auriemma, called immediately. He told her mother to bring Elena back to school. He'd seen this before -- homesickness, nerves. But Elena's mother knew something about this was different. "I can see it in her face," she told him.
They were in for one awkward summer. The Auriemmas and the Delle Donnes had vacation homes in Avalon, on the Jersey shore. One afternoon, Elena rode her bike the few blocks to the coach's house. They sat and talked for hours. He suggested she come back to school, no basketball. She stuck with her no. Auriemma seemed sad. "He thought my dreams were to be the greatest basketball player to ever walk the planet and to win championships," she says. "But that just wasn't my dream at that time." Auriemma's wife, Kathy, who had overheard the whole conversation, finally came in. She said, "Geno, she's not going to play for you. Let her go home."
Auriemma had been so eager to coach her. "It's very rare to find someone who is that tall and can handle the ball, pass the ball, shoot it like she does," he tells me. Can you blame him for being upset about losing a player with those abilities? The way she'd linger in the air while taking a 3-point shot, the way she'd cut and glide around the floor. "Those are all things that when she was in high school you didn't see much of," he says. "This feeling that someone like her comes along once in a great while. People had not seen this in the past."
Click [HERE] for the complete article "The Audicity of Height" about EDD.
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