Kirby Dixon was joking, but after Wednesday’s performance on the boards by senior Shaniqua Reese the Murry Bergtraum might as well have been making a statement to the rest of the PSAL.
“Who needs Shuky?” Dixon said with a laugh after Reese grabbed 15 rebounds and blocked four shots in Bergtraum’s 67-58 win over John F. Kennedy in The Bronx.
Shuky is, of course, Shukurah Washington, the bruising, rebound-grabbing machine Bergtraum had the last three years. Washington earned a scholarship to DePaul, but failed to qualify and is now at Brookdale (N.J.) CC.
In her place, Bergtraum has Shuky Lite. Reese, an Oak Hill Academy transfer, might not be as strong as powerful, but at 5-foot-11 she’s long, super athletic and has no lack of desire either. Not bad for a girl who played guard the first three years of her career.
“We take guards and we make them into post players,” Bergtraum coach Ed Grezinsky said, referring to Reese and Washington. “She’s a guard, she’s very athletic, about 5-11. She’s the closest thing we got to a Shukurah Washington.”
Reese, who has interest from Penn State, South Florida and Seton Hall, has welcomed the change to the post, though she still sometimes heads to the perimeter. Her penetration skills are still top-notch.
“I don’t mind playing the forward,” she said. “It wasn’t a big change for me, going from guard. I’ll do whatever it takes to help the team win. … The team is type small, so [Grezinsky] needed somebody to help rebound. It’s pretty good. It’s not hard. I got the length, the speed.”
Reese, a Crown Heights, Brooklyn native, started her high-school career at Thomas Jefferson and was a key figure in the Orange Wave’s 2008-09 trip to the PSAL Class AA semifinals, where they ironically lost to Bergtraum. She left Jefferson for Oak Hill after that sophomore season on the advice of Exodus travel program head Apache Paschall, because her grades were suffering at Jefferson.
A 90 student with a good SAT score, Reese excelled at Oak Hill academically, but became homesick last winter. She transferred to Paschall’s old school, St. Michael Academy, in February, but was not eligible to play. When St. Mike’s closed, she decided not to follow Paschall and his players to Nazareth and instead enrolled at former rival Bergtraum, where she thought she could help the Lady Blazers win a 13th straight PSAL Class AA title.
So far, that plan is working. Reese also had 12 points against Kennedy, but it was the little things she did, especially in the second half after Bergtraum started flat in the first. She had a big block of Knights point guard Shaquaya Daniels, sending the ball crashing hard into the gym wall underneath the basket.
“She had blocks, rebounds,” Bergtraum’s Canisius-bound guard Ashley Gomez said. “Rebounds helped us the most. We probably would have lost without her. She was scoring pretty well, too, today.”
Reese is still getting acclimated to her new surroundings. Grezinsky said Wednesday that his players feel this year that they have to uphold the program’s tradition, that they feel like they cannot be the team to not win the PSAL title. After just six games, Reese is not quite there, not quite feeling the pride of wearing “Lady Blazers” on her jersey.
“Not yet,” she said. “At the end I think I will.”
And Reese is definitely one of the means to that end.