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Vanessa Gidden yearns to carry a clipboard, blow a whistle and diagram plays for a basketball team. The 25-year-old's desire to shoot, rebound and block shots, however, supersedes her wish to begin a coaching career.
"I was offered a coaching job in college, but I wasn't ready to give up playing yet,'' Gidden said. "I don't think I'm quite done yet."
Gidden, a 6-foot-3 center, was a star at Stamford High under Curtis Tinnin and at Hofstra University. She now plays for the Jamaican national team and is considering her choices in Europe. She has played in Turkey she was the league MVP in her only year there as well as in Finland and Romania.
She coached an AAU team this summer and tried out with the Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA. The highlights, however, were the Jamaican team's silver medal in the Centro Basketball Tournament and bronze in the Central America and Caribbean Games. The team qualified for the 2011 Pan Am Games and the 2011 FIBA Americas Championship. "It's the first time we've ever won a medal in the Centro tournament,'' Gidden said.
She moved with her family from Jamaica to New York when she was about 10. Her older sister, Sharnett, played basketball at Stamford and Gidden went to the practices. "Coach Tinnin said to my Mom, 'She's going to be good.' My mom said, 'Go away.' "
She developed at Hofstra under coach Felisha Jack, who is now at Indiana. Gidden helped Hofstra, which won eight games the year before she arrived, post a 26-8 record her senior year.
"Our first game was against North Carolina, and I was thinking I'm in the wrong place,'' Gidden said. "My freshman year I didn't know if I belonged there. Fortunately, I had coaches that believed in me."
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