Women’s basketball season is over. For everyone, that is, except Julie McBride. For her, the real work has just started. All her life, she’s worked for this. Every day she’s spent endless hours in the gym, so why should anything change now just because her Syracuse career is over?

After the Orangewomen’s first-round loss in the Big East tournament on March 6, she promised herself she’d take some time off and enjoy her Spring Break. That lasted for two days. She couldn’t stay away. The gym has been her refuge as long as she remembers. She loves the feeling of a basketball in her hands.

After all, endless hours in the gym is how she made it to Syracuse in the first place after everyone told her she was too small to play at a big-time school. It’s how the 5-foot-4 guard from Mechanicville has become SU’s career scoring and assists leader. And spending hours in the gym every day is the only way she’ll fulfill her dream of playing in the WNBA – a dream she once scribbled into a fifth-grade memory book.

‘I’m always at the gym,’ McBride said. ‘I come if I’m having a bad day or I just need to relax.’

McBride’s teammates say all she does is play and watch basketball. Her mother, Debbie, said that’s the way it’s always been ever since McBride picked up a Nerf basketball around age 3 of 4 and never put it down. By the time she was 5, she regularly begged her father, Michael, to go to his rec-league basketball games.

Thirteen years ago, the McBrides installed a court in their backyard. McBride would play outside all day, beating the neighborhood kids – almost all of them boys. In fifth grade she wanted to play in an organized league, but there wasn’t one for girls. So again, she played with the boys and beat them. She also played soccer and softball.

‘She also liked football,’ Debbie McBride said. ‘My husband used to say she could probably throw the ball better than any boy.’

After eighth grade, McBride and her parents decided it would benefit her to attend a private school, Catholic High. For one, the school offered her a more competitive basketball program. But McBride’s parents also felt she could use more discipline in her life. Her mother said that McBride has always had academic potential, but at times hasn’t applied herself because of her concentration on basketball.

Catholic High gave McBride a more structured education. At first she was fine with just passing classes. All she wanted to do was play ball. During her freshman year, she failed a couple of New York State Regents Exams – exams that are necessary to earn a state regents diploma. Her parents forced her to get a tutor that summer and told her if her grades didn’t improve they’d pull her out of school. McBride turned her grades around. Her mother said by the time McBride was a senior she was a great student. She has continued to excel in class at Syracuse.

‘Now her attitude is working toward getting a 4.0,’ Debbie McBride said. ‘She learned about being responsible and not making excuses. She learned a lot at Catholic High.’

To help pay for Catholic High or items such as a new pair of basketball shoes, McBride had to help her father at Michael’s construction field. McBride would tag along picking up scraps and occasionally painting or hammering.

‘She probably destroyed more that she helped,’ Michael McBride said.

Because of her height, few schools gave McBride offers. Syracuse was one of the only big schools that gave her an offer. Former head coach Mariana Freeman gave her a chance and McBride took advantage.

Junior Rochelle Coleman said that McBride is almost always one of the last to leave practice. If she’d been struggling with her shot, she’d spend extra time in the gym to improve it. She’d do extra weight lifting, extra running, whatever it took to get better.

As good as McBride’s personal numbers have been during her four years, the Orangewomen have struggled. In only one of her four seasons – her sophomore year – has SU reached the NCAA Tournament. She’s won just two Big East tournament games. And her sophomore year was also the only season of her career that Syracuse has finished with a winning record.

The losing has hurt McBride, but each game she’s bounced back – another trait that her parents instilled in her. This season proved especially difficult. In McBride’s senior campaign, the Orangewomen managed just six wins and finished the season on a 13-game losing streak. McBride has repeatedly said that the records she set this season meant nothing without wins.

‘She gets mad for a little while after losses,’ teammate and roommate Sarah Wegrzynowicz said. ‘She likes to be left alone so she can reflect on what she could do better. I’d give her a couple hours and then we’d go eat or something.’

Said Debbie McBride: ‘Mike always told her it’s a game. You know what you did wrong and you can’t change. If you had a bad day shooting, well, go shoot tomorrow. She heard it from Mike, and that was it.’

McBride actually said that her junior year was less enjoyable than this past season. The year after SU’s NCAA Tournament appearance, the Orangewomen lost seven games by five or less points. McBride said the team lacked chemistry and would point fingers after close losses. It was also Freeman’s last season with the team, and McBride said she could tell that Freeman was on her way out.

This season, despite the losses, McBride said there has been no finger pointing, which has made the year more bearable. If anything, it has been a learning season. At times, McBride has been frustrated by SU’s inability to push the ball, something that she had thrived at during her first three seasons. She also had to deal with the suspension of four Orangewomen and playing a large part of the season with just seven players.

But the experience has helped McBride in the long run. She now understands why the Orangewomen couldn’t run the ball. Pushing it up court with only seven players would have been near impossible. Even with its full roster, SU lacked the athletes necessary to run a fast-paced offense.

‘She knew he was the coach and she had to listen no matter what,’ Debbie McBride said. ‘But it killed her. It’s not her style or the way she’s been playing all her life. But she knew she had to listen to him.’

Said McBride: ‘I talked to him about it many times but I knew we couldn’t. I begged him every day.’

In the last game of her SU career against Boston College in the Big East tournament, McBride sat on the bench next to SU Director of Basketball Operations Amy Reckner with two minutes remaining. The Orangewomen trailed by double-digits. The Syracuse pep band began chanting her name. Reckner whispered that this wouldn’t be McBride’s last game. The band’s gesture nearly brought McBride to tears.

Her work in the gym has ensured that the March 6 loss to the Eagles wouldn’t be McBride’s last game. Her routine can last up to six hours some days and includes running, lifting and shooting. She only has class on Tuesday and Thursday, leaving her plenty of time to work out. Lately, Wegrzynowicz, Coleman and some of the other Orangewomen have helped McBride during her workouts. Since Wegrzynowicz stands 9 inches taller than McBride at 6 feet 1 inch, she helps by playing defense and jumping out at McBride’s shots.

‘Her workouts go longer than our practices,’ Wegrzynowicz said. ‘It’s pretty intense. She’ll just go on for hours.’

Since the season has ended, she’s refrained from watching women’s college basketball. Instead, she chooses to watch the NBA, admiring Jason Kidd and Earl Boykins and analyzing their every move. She attended the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Bridgeport, Conn., to watch good friend Ashley Battle play for Connecticut. She also knows UConn head coach Geno Auriemma from working a summer camp. She said watching women’s basketball makes her too mad for now. She won’t watch any team play besides the Huskies.

In late April, McBride hopes to get the opportunity to try out for a WNBA team. If that doesn’t work out, she’ll head overseas. Someday she wants to get into coaching. As an internship for her family and child studies major, she helped the girl’s team at Christian Brothers Academy in Syracuse. While McBride said she doesn’t have the patience to coach at the high school level, she hopes to coach in college when her playing days are over.

Regardless of her future, McBride will always be remembered as one of the greatest players in SU women’s basketball history. No other player in Big East history has been her school’s career leader in assists and points.

Next year, the Orangewomen will bring in two players – Amanda Adamson and Mary Joe Riley – capable of playing point guard. But it will be a lofty task for either to live up to McBride’s standards – both in practice and in games.

‘There’ll never be another Julie McBride,’ McBride said. ‘There’s only one me. You got to want to be successful. You’ve got to want to set goals for yourself. I’ve always wanted people to think of me as someone that works really hard. And by accomplishing the things I have and seeing my accolades, (future players) can come here, look in the media guide and say, ‘I want to do that, too.’ But you’ve got work hard.’

Published on April 5, 2004 at 12:00 pm