Freshman basketball players wants to be closer to her family

By Brooks Hatch
Gazette-Times reporter

Oregon State freshman forward Judie Lomax will transfer to a school closer to her family and to her hometown of Potomac, Md., women’s basketball coach LaVonda Wagner said Tuesday.

Lomax’s likely destination is an Ivy League school, or other Division I private university within two hours of Potomac, a suburb of Washington, D.C. OSU’s school year ends in mid-June so she may withdraw after this term so she can be at her new school when summer classes begin in May.

She leaves in excellent academic standing and has been granted her release and thus can receive athletic financial aid, if the school she decides to attend allows that. Ivy League schools do not grant athletic scholarships.

“I would like to thank coach Wagner for the opportunity to be a part of the program,” Lomax said in a statement released by the school. “This experience allowed me to grow and further develop my game.

“I realize that being close to home and sharing my experiences with my family is very important to me. I’ll dearly miss my teammates, the staff and all the good people I’ve met in Oregon.”

Generously listed as 5-foot-11, Lomax started all 28 games and averaged 10.7 points, second on the team to senior guard Casey Nash, and a team-high 7.7 rebounds. She led the Pacific-10 Conference in field-goal percentage (.645, 120-for-186), made the conference’s all-freshmen team and established personal bests of 18 points and 17 rebounds.

“She gave us an element of toughness, but so did the entire team,” Wagner said. “We were a team of tough young women.

“Judy gave us exactly what we needed, particularly after Tiffany (Ducker) left school. She took over that role, had to play for 40 minutes and did a good job of that.”

Lomax and her younger sister were raised by their aunt and their grandmother. She was home for only three days at Christmas and became increasingly homesick after returning to Oregon, and unhappy that her family was unable to see her play.

That wasn’t an issue when she signed and first came to OSU.

“At the time, Judy wasn’t very close with her family,” Wagner said. “Being out here, being successful in basketball and not having the ability for them to see that and share that with her was hard. She couldn’t go with her family and friends after a game, like everybody else could, and that was hard for her.

“She realized it was important for her to share those experiences with her family. Judy gave us a lot, she had a tremendous year. She got a lot from us, we helped her be successful.

“She truly realized that being able to have the people who raised her in her life see her on a daily or weekly basis is really important.”

Wagner said homesickness and other family issues are always a concern when signing players who will be a long way from home.

“There are always question marks,” Wagner said. “I’m from the East Coast (Bristol, Va.) and I’m an adult, but I miss my family as well. We knew it might be a four-year stretch.

“She had a lot of success that her family could only see on DVD. She truly got closer to her family; she was on the phone with them eight times a day.

Wagner said there are no hard feelings on either side.

“I understand where she’s coming from probably better than anybody,” Wagner said. “She grew up a lot, and her family and her are closer because of the distance” between them this year.

“I wish her well.”

Lomax graduated from The Bullis School is Washington. D.C., and was a four-time All-Independent School League all-star, and a third-team all-metro area all-star as a senior, as selected by the Washington Post newspaper.