Forget Cam Newton. David Six has come up with an even more unusual way to dupe the NCAA and keep point guard and team leader Jericka Jenkins at Hampton University past her senior season.
“You didn’t hear? Jericka’s not leaving,” Six said. “We found a loophole in the NCAA that allowed her to stay for one more year — the ‘Please, baby baby please,’ loophole.”
Newton escaped fallout from a pay-for-play scandal after his father, not considered an agent at the time under a since-adjusted NCAA rule, shopped his skills to schools.
Six’s suggested circumvention, no matter how heartfelt, is unlikely to bring Jenkins back next season. So he’ll just have to settle for appreciating her while he has her.
Jenkins ranks second in the nation with 7.8 assists per game and is second all-time in that category at Hampton with 554 career assists. She also leads the Lady Pirates (16-4, 8-1 Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference) with 14.9 points per game.
Her impact, though, goes beyond numbers. To wit: In Monday’s 74-60 win against Morgan State, the Lady Pirates, who lost their first conference game in 20 tries in Saturday’s overtime defeat at the hands of Coppin State, found themselves in another close game late. The Lady Bears were within six with 4:30 to play and threatening, for the second straight game, the invincibility HU has built in winning back-to-back MEAC tournament titles and a regular-season championship last season.
Jenkins was having none of it. She drove the lane, got fouled and made both free throws. Then, after a block from Hampton center Sherena Abercrumbia led to a shot clock violation, Jenkins head-faked a defender out of bounds and drained a baseline jumper. Abercrumbia put the game away by going 4-for-4 from the free-throw line after twice being fouled on turnaround jumpers in the post — courtesy of entry passes from Jenkins.
Her teammates rain praise on her, game after game. Six calls her the maestro and, when she’s on, one of the best point guards in the country.
It’s a lot of adulation for anyone, especially a 5-foot-4 point guard who arrived at Hampton in 2008 fresh off the battle of her life.
A hard-won perspective
In 2005, Jenkins was a 14-year-old three-sport athlete in Lancaster, Texas, when a lump on her collarbone led to a devastating diagnosis: Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that causes abnormal growth of the cells of the lymph system.
Jenkins reacted with disbelief — “I thought (the doctor) was lying,” she told The Daily Press in 2009 and allowed herself to cry. Once. Then, the summer after her freshman year of high school, she got down to business, undergoing six rounds of chemotherapy, followed by radiation.
Her hair fell out and friends who couldn’t handle her illness stopped calling, but Jenkins was determined to play college basketball. She drove herself to her final chemotherapy treatment, then to the gym to work out.
In November 2007, when she was 17, doctors declared Jenkins in remission. She graduated from Lancaster High with honors and brought her hoop dreams to Hampton.
These days, Jenkins has once-a-year checkups. Hodgkin’s disease can recur, sometimes years after treatment.
“Honestly, I do worry every time I go, because you never know what it might be, just because of the all the long-term side effects that they talk to me about,” said Jenkins, who went in for her checkup earlier this month. “Every time I go, I just pray that everything comes back OK. Usually it does, but I still worry, just a tad bit.”
When Jenkins does get tired or sore, it’s nothing ibuprofren can’t fix.
“I just take some vitamins and over-the-counter things, and I’ll be all right,” she said.
Jenkins’ battle with Hodgkin’s disease has left its mark in other, more positive ways.
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