“We had collard greens, yams, red beans and rice, gumbo, chicken, cornbread, all kinds of things,” Ja’Cole said. “Everybody brought something different. I made mac ‘n’ cheese.”
So how was it?
“Oh we couldn’t eat,” Ja’Cole said with a shrug. “That will have to wait until afterwards.”
She already had a heavy heart, she didn’t want a heavy stomach for this night, as well.
Ja’Cole and Brittaney, both from Chaminade Julienne High School, are senior stalwarts of the Wilmington College women’s basketball team and they were playing the last regular season home game of their careers Wednesday night.
Before the tip against Capital University, a team that had beaten the Lady Quakers by 14 earlier in the season, the pair and two other teammates were being honored at center court as part of Senior Night.
By game’s end Brittaney would go over 1,100 career points and become No. 2 all-time in steals for Wilmington. Ja’Cole would have played her 85th game for the Lady Quakers and, as usual, she’d have come off the bench and moved into the paint, where, even though she’s just 5-foot-9, she gives the team fearlessness and grit.
“When I walked out there on the court it reality hit me,” Ja’Cole would admit later. “I realized it was all winding down. Hopefully, we get to play another four or five weeks (in the postseason).
“For me, especially because I didn’t play much as a freshman and sophomore, basketball made me develop as a person. For me, Wilmington College has been life-changing. It’s made me grow into a young woman.”
And what a beautiful transformation it’s been for both young women, say those who have watched them here for four years.
While both are black on a campus where the student body is maybe 85 percent white, they didn’t just find a home, they made a lasting impact.
“They changed Wilmington College and I’m not talking about just the Lady Quakers basketball team,” said assistant coach Allan King Jr., who took over the reins Wednesday night when Hall of Fame head coach Jerry Scheve was sidelined with illness.
“They’re not just known as basketball players here, they are known as important people across the entire campus. Ja’Cole is part of every student organization you can be a part of. She the president of the Black Students group. She’s an RA (resident assistant) and does a lot of other things. Last year she hosted the WESPYs — our version of the ESPYs on campus — and she did a fantastic job.
“The two of them are special people and that’s how you get kids to end up being special players. Those two have something neat inside them that doesn’t come around too often.”
Chip Murdock, the director of the Multicultural Affairs Office at Wilmington and the advisor of BSI, agreed. He said the pair shatters preconceived notions about college athletes:
“They set up a model that not all athletes are dumb. That not all athletes are absorbed with just being an athlete.
“Ja’Cole is a diverse student who just happens to play basketball, not a ballplayer who’s just going to school to play. And Brittaney, right now, is working on a special assignment archiving and digital-izing a lot of photos for the multicultural affairs office.
“The thing that makes me most proud is that the two of them will graduate on time and plan to further their education.”
Brittaney is planning on grad school at Wright State and Ja’Cole plans to attend Xavier.
“These are two young women who represented Dayton well,” said Murdock. “They represented Chaminade Julienne well and they especially represented their families well.”
Not into Barbies
“Remember how we always had matching outfits?” Brittaney said with a shake of the head and a grin to her cousin. “Matching outfits and shoes — those ugly little sandals that we had to wear.”
Ja’Cole laughed: “I remember when we went to Disney World. We had those little t-shirts with stick figure black people. They had box heads and some had dreads. It was a Jamaican-type look. Everybody used to wear ‘em back in the day.”
Brittaney nodded: “We had little blue shorts and we all got our hair the same.”
Brittaney’s mother, Melissa Roland, is the aunt of Ja’Cole’s mom, Nicole Foreman.
While Brittaney grew up with her mom and dad in Trotwood, Ja’Cole was raised near UD Arena by her mom, who had her when she was 18.
Undaunted, Nicole went on to Sinclair Community College for her associate’s degree, Central State for her bachelor’s and then got her master’s from Indiana Wesleyan. Today she’s a deputy clerk with the Dayton Municipal Court.
“My mom was a single parent, but she always made sure I didn’t miss a beat,” Ja’Cole said. “She made sure I always had new clothes, new shoes, whatever I needed.”
As Nicole explained: “I had a great support system. It does take a village.”
Ja’Cole started playing basketball at 5, first on a portable goal her mom got her and then at the Westwood Recreation Center.
“I played with the boys,” she said. “I was the only girl and everybody hated seeing me coming ‘cause I was so tall as a kid.
“And I wasn’t no soft girl! I’d knock you on your butt and make you cry… and I wouldn’t care.”
So what was Brittaney doing back then?
“She was playin’ with Barbies,” Ja’Cole smirked.
“Yeah, but I hated Barbie,” Brittaney shrugged. “I was forced to.”
For one year, in third grade, Brittaney tried basketball and then quit until restarting in sixth grade. Her mom said she really began to develop when she got with her seventh-grade coaches at Mary Queen of Peace.
The cousins went on to CJ and helped lead the Eagles to the final four of the state tournament in 2013.
They drew college interest from several NCAA Division III programs and at Wilmington not only found the line of study they wanted to pursue — Ja’Cole athletic training, Brittaney psychology/social work — but a campus setting they liked.
“I told Ja’Cole to choose a place where, if basketball suddenly ended, she’d still feel comfortable,” Nicole said. “She felt that at Wilmington.”
Melissa heard the same from Brittaney:
“When we came for a college visit, she said it just felt right. She said it felt like a home to her.”
‘A Cole’s World’
Before last Wednesday’s game, the four Lady Quakers seniors — the other two were post player Mary Moyer and guard Ashley Andracki — were accompanied onto Hermann Court by their families.
Ja’Cole was escorted by her mom and her cousin Blair King, also a Wilmington student.
As did many vocal supporters in the crowd, they wore custom t-shirts that bore a pair of photos of Ja’Cole, one showing a basketball riding atop her biceps in a recent muscle pose and the other a picture of her as a grade-school hoops player.
The back of Nicole’s shirt proclaimed “MOM” in big letters. Blair’s read “LIL CUZ.” And each shirt sported the motto “It’s a Cole’s World.”
Later, sitting in the stands, Melissa explained the familial enthusiasm:
“This is where Brittaney really blossomed.”
A 5-foot-5 guard, Brittaney stood tall from the day she walked into Wilmington’s Fred Raizk Arena. She played in all 27 games as a freshman and averaged 8.3 points. Counting Saturday’s regular-season finale at Baldwin Wallace, she’s played in 106 games for the Lady Quakers and averaged 10.6 points.
Ja’Cole — who dealt with injuries her first two seasons, including a freak concussion from a rebound that ricocheted off the rim straight into her face — has played in 86 games.
Off the court, she has made her biggest splash.
“She does like 25 million things,” Brittaney teased.
She mentors three freshmen, serves as a member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, is treasurer of the Student Philanthropy Council and worked as an athletic trainer for the Fighting Quakers football team this past season. She’s also worked with men’s basketball.
And then there are the two years she’s served as the president of the Black Student Initiative, which Murdock described as:
“It’s a cultural resource for students that, among other things, provides a safe space for them to discuss their issues. And it serves as an educational resource that provides programs on campus and it’s a way for students to stay connected to their culture.”
The group sponsors everything from a movie night, dinners and story-telling to its annual signature event, the African Village, which takes place later this month.
“Each year they have a theme,” Murdock said. “Last year it was Black Lives Matter and they had a forum that included a Black Lives activist, two policemen and a peace activist on campus.
“This year we’re doing a dramatic skit — ‘Hidden History’ — that includes different vignettes that depict things you might not know much about.
“It was inspired by the movie ‘Hidden Figures,’ about the African-American women mathematicians who worked for NASA (and specifically the launch and safe return of astronaut John Glenn). They’ll bring up various other things people don’t know about, like Black Wall Street in Tulsa.”
Ja’Cole explained her involvement: “I think it’s important on an agricultural campus like ours to introduce people to other cultures and history they might not know.”
Murdock said the pair has “not forgotten where they’ve come from” either.
He said they have returned to Dayton, representing BSI at a cancer walk and various other events. On campus, he said they’ve been part of everything from the Relay For Life to a vigil for young black lives lost.
Coach King said such involvements by Ja’Cole and Brittaney have paid dividends for the whole team.
“They make our basketball team better,” he said Wednesday night. “Did you see the good crowd we had tonight? That’s because our girls are liked by students across campus. Not just because they are athletes, but because of what they stand for in general.”
The lively crowd lifted the Lady Quakers in a game that saw 12 lead changes.
Wilmington finally edged Capital, 60-53, thanks to Brittaney’s game-high 17 points and Ja’Cole’s game-high 10 rebounds and five steals.
Afterward the pair talked about what will come next in their lives. Brittaney hopes to do social work with families of children with mental health issues. Ja’Cole plans to be an obstetrics nurse.
With a grin, she added something else that may come first:
“Hopefully I travel the world, just me and my pet monkey. No kids. Everybody else can have kids and I’ll be more than happy to baby-sit.”
Brittaney grinned and shook her head: “That’s right, she wants a monkey.”
It might have been a joke, but there was one thing Ja’Cole was definitely serious about.
As soon as she finished talking, she was heading off to see if any of that soul food dinner was still left.
Like Brittaney, she doesn’t pass up much that Wilmington has to offer.
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