SCHUYLER LARUE
Nancy Lieberman, Carol Blazejowski…Wait, what?
What about Babe Didrikson before she took Zaharias as her surname? Or Senda Berenson (Abbott) if we go back to the beginning, known as The Mother of Women’s Basketball?
Valerie Ackerman. Cynthia Cooper. Anne Donovan. Teresa Edwards. Sue Gunter. Lusia (Lucy) Harris (-Stewart). Chamique Holdsclaw. Janice Lawrence (Braxton). Kara Lawson. Lisa Leslie (-Lockwood). Rebecca Lobo (-Rushin). Hortencia Marcari. Ashley McElhiney. Ann Meyers (Drysdale). Cheryl Miller. Kim Mulkey. Cathy Rush. Dawn Staley. Pat Summitt. Sheryl Swoopes. Bertha F. Teague. Margaret Wade. Nera White. Lynette Woodard. Sandra Kay Yow.
These ladies were/are some of the titans of American women’s basketball which traces its birth to 1892, the year after James Naismith invented the game in Massachusetts. By 1895 the women’s game was being played at Vassar, Bryn Mawr and Wellesley Colleges and in 1896 the first women’s intercollegiate game between Stanford and Cal.-Berkeley ended (mercifully?) in a 2–1 Stanford victory.
The Women’s Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation (WDNAAF) proved to be a thorn in the side of the women’s game — deeming it too competitive — cancelling AAU National Women’s Tournaments until 1929, and into the ’30s the staid organization continued to pressure states to ban women’s basketball tournaments with more than a modicum of success.
During World War II competition and recreational basketball became more commonplace and by 1955 the first Pan-American Games included women’s basketball. (The team from the USA brought home the gold medal).
With the 1972 enactment of Title IX which mandated that federally-funded schools support, promote and bankroll women’s sports equitably including teams, scholarships, recruitment and media coverage, the floodgates opened.
And the rest as they say is history.
Which brings us to Schuyler LaRue. Schuye (pronounced “Sky”) LaRue’s name and number should be hanging from the rafters dripping with sweet basketball honor. She was that good.
Nah. She was even better than that.
A prep superstar at Archbishop Carroll High School in D.C. and then the 2000 ACC Rookie of the Year and All-ACC first team player at the University of Virginia who led Lady ’Hoos to the Sweet 16, the 6’2” LaRue was once widely considered the best young women’s basketballer in the United States. The next season, as a sophomore, she was a bona fide candidate for the national player of the year, leading the nation in double-doubles.
As a nineteen-year-old, the world was her oyster and scaling even greater heights as she completed the final two years of her collegiate basketball career — and graduated on time from the esteemed university — was a foregone conclusion. She was the talk of women’s basketball. She was the future of UVA.
The Sky’s the limit; more to the point, Schuye had no limit.
Didn’t happen. And it wasn’t, nor is it, nor will it ever be through any fault of Schuyler LaRue.
Just as money doesn’t care in whose pocket it lies, mental illness doesn’t discriminate. Schuye LaRue was first diagnosed in 2002 with schizophrenia and psychotic disorder.
Due to a confluence of bizarre and disparate circumstances — her belief that she had to turn pro because, according to her (and her alone) she had taken money under the table; her aborted stint as a professional in Italy which lasted only one season; family issues which included her brother being shot in the head and killed in a drug deal gone south along with the death of her grandfather; her cup of coffee as the 27th. 2003 WNBA draft pick of the Los Angeles Sparks for whom she never played a game; her decision to forego taking her prescribed medication after a few weeks because it was too expensive and it made her “weary”; and her subsequent delusional, argumentative and sometimes belligerent behavior with neighbors which resulted in her mother, fearing eviction, putting her out to fend for herself in 2006 — Schuyler LaRue is now a statistic.
She is one of the more than 7,000 homeless people in Washington, D.C.
Former teammate and WNBA superstar Chamique Holdsclaw vividly recalls a chance meeting with LaRue in a D.C. sandwich shop.
“I’m in shock now,” she began. “I’m in Logan Circle in D.C. and went to Jimmy John’s for a sandwich. When I arrive there the workers are asking a tall woman to please leave the premises. I make eye contact with the woman and she says, ‘Chamique, please buy me a sandwich.’”
Holdsclaw places her order and the wheels started turning. “What caught my attention was the woman was taller than me and appeared to be homeless or on serious drugs. As I order, in my head I’m like, ‘I know this woman.’ Finally it hits me. It’s Schuye LaRue…”
Holdsclaw continues, “I shout to the guys, ‘Y’all don’t know who that is, huh?’ I then tell them that was one of the best basketball players from D.C. She was an amazing athlete. They look at me in disbelief. I’m like, ‘I’m serious. I used to play pick-up with her and she would give me a run for my money.’…This kid used to blow up my phone to play one on one.”
Chamique Holdsclaw gladly bought LaRue a sandwich and returned to her eleventh-floor hotel room across the way. As she walked back to the hotel, she asked God to look out for LaRue. When she returned, she looked out her window and saw her old friend lying on the street, apparently asleep.
Holdsclaw has also battled mental illness.
Chamique Holdsclaw is now a mental health ambassador.
One in twenty-five (9.8 million) Americans are saddled with a serious mental illness which “substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities,” as defined by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).***
1.1% of adults in the United States live with schizophrenia; 2.6% live with bipolar disorder. 6.9% of the U.S. adult population or 16 million people had at least one major depressive episode in the past year. Among the 20.2 million adults in the U.S. who experienced a substance abuse disorder, no fewer than 50.5% or 10.2 million suffered from a mental illness at the same time.
An estimated 26% of homeless adults staying in shelters live with serious mental illness and that figure jumps to 46% when substance use/abuse disorders are considered.
African-Americans and Hispanic Americans each avail themselves of mental health services at roughly one-half the rate of Caucasian Americans.
Numbers. Statistics. Studies. All valuable but all pale by comparison to the value, the worth of people, the person, the human being.
Respectfully it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about Schuyler LaRue or a close family member or friend.
We must commit to doing better for everybody — on the behalves of all.
We can. I know it.
***Quantitative analysis is a bit dated. Apologies.
