Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 22, 1993 TAG: 9302220294
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS BACHELDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
HOLLINS GUARD BEEDIE HAS TRANSITION GAME DOWN PAT
In the spring of 1988, three-sport star Serena Frazier was one of 62 graduating seniors at West Point High School in quaint West Point, Neb.Five years, two schools and a few solemn vows later, she has a new name and a new home. Serena Beedie is 1,000 miles east of West Point, playing point guard for Hollins College.
Talk about a transition game.
It has been an unusual and unforeseeable journey for Beedie, who has helped turn around Hollins basketball in her two solid seasons.
Hollins finished the regular season with a school-record 12 wins and plays at No. 2-seeded Bridgewater in the first round of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference tournament Wednesday at 7 p.m.
After many dark years - "I heard the horror stories," Beedie said - Hollins has won 22 games in the two years since the simultaneous arrivals of coach Laura Willeges and her transplanted playmaker.
Beedie is second in the ODAC in per-game scoring (16.0 points) and third in assists (4.0). In addition to those categories, she leads her team in 3-pointers (26), steals (107) and spouses (one).
"On the first day of practice [last season at Hollins], we all got together and said our name, major and something about ourselves," Beedie said. "I said, `I'm Serena, I'm in education and I'm married.'
"All the jaws hit the floor."
Beedie, 22, walked the aisle months before she ever drove the lane at Hollins. She met her husband, Bill Beedie, during her freshman year at Doane College in Crete, Neb. Doane is an NAIA school where Beedie - also a track and volleyball standout at West Point - started her collegiate career on a basketball scholarship.
In spring 1990, Bill Beedie, a football tight end and track athlete at Doane, graduated and took a job as a sales representative with James River Corporation in Chicago, his home. Shortly thereafter, he bought an engagement ring and proposed.
But he was transferred to Roanoke after two months in Chicago. The target of his fancy stayed in school at Crete but sat out of athletics her junior season. The couple saw each other once - during spring break - the entire school year.
"We were going to wait two years to get married, until Serena finished at Doane," said Beedie, 24. "But after we survived that year, we said, `Let's do it now.' "
In June 1991, the two were married in West Point, and Serena left her family and the Midwest for her new home.
"I had never seen the ocean or the mountains out here. It was all new - and I hated it," Beedie said, laughing. "It's really pretty here, it's just that I was so far from my family. Everything was up in the air and I didn't know anybody and I kept getting lost."
Beedie first checked into Roanoke College, but she said she got no response when she expressed her interest in playing sports. She then enrolled at Hollins College, but she decided to forgo athletics for a job.
A miserable week as a pet shop employee and a chance meeting with a volleyball player changed her plans. Beedie walked into volleyball tryouts and helped change that team's fortunes as well.
"Our athletic director told me there was a married student who was interested in possibly playing volleyball," said David Turk, a Salem High School teacher and coach who has coached Hollins volleyball the past five years.
"That's all I knew," Turk said. "It was a shot in the dark and quite an incredible surprise. Serena is such a good athlete."
Turk said Beedie, a two-time second team all-ODAC selection, arrived with two other key recruits. In Turk's first three seasons at Hollins, the team won 11 matches. In the past two years, it has won 27, including 16 last season, along with two tournament titles.
After volleyball season, Beedie shuffled to the basketball court and greeted the ODAC with 15.7 points per game in Hollins' 10-win season.
Beedie said being married and keeping up with sports and classwork is "harder than people realize." She will graduate in May and will be certified to teach kindergarten through third grade. The Beedies are eager to move back closer to their families after she earns her degree.
But there are still a few more dribbles and jumpers remaining in Beedie's basketball career. She leads Hollins into the tournament on a personal hot streak. She was the ODAC player of the week for Feb. 7-14, in part because of her 18 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists against Eastern Mennonite on Feb. 13.
On Feb. 16, against Bridgewater, she racked up 20 points, 12 steals, nine rebounds, one block and two 3-pointers.
"Statistically, she leads us in about everything, and that says a lot in itself," said Willeges, who was hired full-time at Hollins after one year as an assistant at Texas-San Antonio. "She also complements the other players and makes them better.
"She approaches the game differently than other players, basketball sense-wise. I don't have an assistant coach, so I bounce ideas off her. She's very helpful that way."
Beedie would like to coach some day and said she's glad she stuck with sports at Hollins, a school she didn't know existed two years ago. In just 18 months, she has assisted in bringing two sports to a competitive level.
"I heard about the teams going places and getting butchered," Beedie said. "But we're playing to win now. We're not scared, like I think of the past teams."