“Through the wins and the losses — and there have been a lot more losses the last two years — she’s continued to walk through the hallways every day, hugging everybody, always lifting them up.
“From the time I took the job (two seasons ago), she’s wanted to make an impact and help build the foundation for the turnaround here. She’s taken our young freshmen under her wing – they’re like her babies – and they’ve learned from her.
“One day she’ll walk back down the tunnel here and out to the court and the people she helped get started will all run to her.
“They’ll thank her for building the foundation.”
As Perez waited her turn stood to go out on the court and join the three other UD players being honored — Taisiya Kozlova, Anyssa Jones and Destiny Bohanon — Nelly, her mom, who was wearing a red UD T-shirt and an ever-present smile, said the one thing that stood out from the five-year odyssey her daughter has been on since leaving their Newark, New Jersey home was: “The young woman she’s become. I’m just so proud of her.”
As for Perez she didn’t focus on herself, but instead nodded to the fans who had stuck it out through the team’s second worst loss of the season, just so they could salute her and her three teammates.
“This is a bittersweet moment,” she said as she tried to steel herself from the tears that had started to show when Williams-Jeter took her out of the game with 1:23 left and an eight-point, six-rebound line in the box score.
Although the Flyers had shot miserably against the Rams — making just 23.4 percent of their field goal attempts (25 of 64) and missing all 13 of their three-point tries — Perez had made 4 of her 8 shots and, most importantly to her, she’d made her final shot ever — a 12-foot jumper — at UD Arena.
“I played my last game in front of the best fans in the country,” she said quietly.
She was glad she could go out on “a positive note.” In the process it means she’s lived up to that promise she made two years ago — to her new coaches, her teammates and especially to herself — that she would finish what she started.
When former head coach, Shauna Green, left the UD program after six successful seasons — including three NCAA Tournament trips and a berth earned into a fourth that was cancelled by the pandemic — five players transferred out as well, five more graduated and an incoming freshman decommitted and went to another school.
That left UD with just four little-used players and before the end of the season, one of them would part ways with the program, as well.
Destiny Bohanon, Shannon Wheeler and Perez were the remaining three.
Perez had been a Flyer the three previous seasons and though she’d played in 73 games, she’d gotten limited minutes in two of those seasons and averaged just 2.4 points and 2.9 rebounds a game in the 2021-22 campaign.
As Williams-Jeter was preparing to take over the Flyers, several people figured Perez also would leave for a fresh start at a different school.
But they didn’t fully know the amicable, 6-foot-3 post player, who now explains:
“I just felt we shouldn’t give up on ourselves or each other. And I wanted to give Coach Meek a chance.
“It was a chance for me, too. It would be the first time I’d be playing for someone who looked more like me. And now, to play under a black woman, has been amazing. She’s been a role model.
“She believed in me. She took the time and effort to push me physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That had an impact on me on the basketball court…and off it, too.
“I’m not saying we haven’t had our roller coasters — just like every player and coach has — but she was honest with me, and she challenged me. She wanted to prepare me for the real world.”
Perez responded to the challenge:
Last season she started 27 games and led the team in rebounding (9.4), was second in scoring (11.9) and at year’s end was voted the team’s Most Improved Player.
In 129 career games with the Flyers, she’s scored 701 points and grabbed 649 rebounds.
Not only is she the first person in her family to be a college athlete, but she also said she’s the first to get a college degree.
She got her undergrad diploma last year and she should finish her masters next December.
Some of her best education has come on the court, where the under-gunned Flyers have struggled the past two seasons. They went 7-21 last year and are 11-18 now with just the Atlantic 10 Tournament remaining.
“This has taught me a lot,” she said the other day. “I’ve had to grow as a person and realize everything on the court – like in life – isn’t going to be perfect. It’s not always going to go your way.
“Instead of focusing on the negatives. I’ve learned to be grateful for the things that are happening. The bonds I’ve built. The way I’ve grown into a young woman.”
Importance of family
Before she was boxing out opposing college players, Perez admitted she denied her own grandmother, though it’s not as bad as it sounds.
She grew up in Newark with a mostly Puerto Rican heritage, although her dad is half Dominican.
Her parents split up along the way and she was raised by her mom.
She said her older brother Mark — who’s 29 and a decade into an Army career — has been her father figure.
“He’d always joke with me and say, ‘You’re not gonna be my first tattoo – Grandma is,” she said with a smile.
“And I’d be like ‘No…no….no!.... Me!…Me! ..Me!’”
Although her grandmother, Maria Perez, had passed away, her influence on the family remained, so Mariah understood the pecking order when it came to needle-and-ink permanence.
“Then one day my brother said, ‘OK, look. I finally got that tattoo.’
" I said, ‘I know. I know. It’s Grandma.’ “But he surprised me. It was me!”
Since then, Mariah has honored him with “Mark” written in script on her inner left forearm. She added a heart next to it. Family is big to her, Perez said. It’s why she chose Dayton over offers closer to home.
“The family atmosphere was great here,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of teammates and a lot of coaches in five years, but one thing hasn’t changed. This program is about family.
“From the administration to the students to fans from the community, they all make you feel like family, no matter what the score or how you play. That’s why I call this place a second home.”
‘I think I have something to offer them’
Perez wants to play professional basketball overseas and one day she said she hopes to open up her own child-care facility:
“I just love children and I want to take care of them and help them grow the way people did me. They’re like a sponge at that age and now I think I have something to offer them.”
She’s already seen how young people look up to her.
In late January — at the annual School Day game that this year drew a program-record crowd of 12,097, most of them kids — Perez was at a courtside table afterwards, signing autographs for a long line of young fans. Next to her was teammate Anyssa Jones, who is half Puerto Rican.
“Two middle school girls came up to us and wanted us to sign a poster they’d made,” Perez said. “It had both our pictures on it.
“They were both Puerto Rican and they said, ‘We love you guys. Thank you.’ It was so nice.”
The girls told the two players that they were their role models.
More than ever, this was proof that Mariah Perez had finished what she started.
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