Monday, June 23, 2008 10:20 PM CDT
Thomas to play basketball at Aurora University
By MIKE MONAHAN, Staff Writer
mmonahan@jg-tc.com
ARCOLA -- Beth Thomas, a recent graduate of Arcola High School, is to continue her basketball career at Aurora University, a Division III school of 4,000.
“I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to play college basketball after my knee injury,” said Thomas, who averaged 7.3 points per game last year for the 19-7 Lady Riders, coached by Nancy Stiff. “I knew I had to work hard to get back to where I was and that was the biggest thing.”
Thomas tore her ACL June 2, 2007, and underwent surgery July 18, 2007.
“They said it would take a year and once I could sit Indian style I felt normal,” said Thomas, who also played volleyball and softball at Arcola. “I am getting up to that point of 100 percent. Right now I am about 90 percent.”
As a junior Thomas, who played center that year, earned the team’s Most Valuable Player award for the second straight year. She averaged 12.1 points, 8 rebound and 1.8 steals per game, while shooting 42.1 percent from the floor and 68.9 percent from the free throw line with 15 3-pointers. She was a member of the Journal-Gazette/Times-Courier All-Area team. Her sophomore year she averaged 9.1 points per game and was a unanimous all-conference pick.
“I mainly picked Aurora because of its nursing program,” said Thomas, who also talked to and visited Blackburn College. “There are not a lot of schools that have a bachelor’s degree for nursing and I really didn’t want to have to transfer.”
Thomas, who has been to Aurora several times, said she heard about Aurora from one of her summer softball coaches, Denny Anderson.
“He knows the softball coach and she had told him that the women’s basketball coach was waning to know if he knew of anyone and that he was looking for basketball players,” said Thomas. “I told coach Anderson I wanted to play basketball. I was afraid he would be upset about that, but he was pretty cool. This year coach (Michelle) Roof came down for a home visit which was nice. Before the year started I was talking to coach Roof.”
Thomas has played basketball since the fifth grade and has a stepsister Sarah (McCullough) Bailey, who lives about a half an hour away in Lockport, and she and her husband Al have two children ages 3 and five-months.
“That definitely helps a lot that she is so close,” said Thomas. “They can be my home away from home and I can get free meals and rides home and see my nephews a lot and hopefully get some baby sitting time.”
Thomas, who saw her first action of the season in December, missing the first four games, competed in the Country Insurance Three-Point Contest, reaching the Class 1A sectional championship at Arcola
Aurora’s coach is a 2001 graduate of Eastern Illinois University, where she played for two years and was a student coach and the Spartans are in the Northern Athletics Conference. Aurora was 13-13 last year and 11-7 in the conference. The Spartans lose only three players from the team, including Kisha Miller of Decatur Eisenhower, who averaged 6.5 points per game, which was fourth on the team. All three players were guards.
“Coach Roof likes to run,” said Thomas. “I really like her ideas and her style. She doesn’t like to keep one group in. She plays a lot of players (last year 11 of the 19 players that played in at least one game, played between 21 and 26 games). If I do get a lot of playing time that would be great.”
Thomas credits her coaches Lisa Boyer, Craig VanDeveer and Nancy Stiff for her success.
“Of course I couldn’t have done it without my parents (Mike and Jennifer Thomas),” said Thomas. This is like a dream come true. I have always wanted to play college ball and when the knee injury happened I was pretty devastated. Now that I am going to play college ball it makes it that much better to know I have overcome all of that and all my hard work has paid off.”
Contact Mike Monahan at mmonahan@jg-tc.com or 238-6854.
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