If you score 1000 points in your college basketball career, chances are that hard work and talent have taken you a long way. But don’t forget the blessings of growing up in the right kind of setting – in Molly Tubridy’s case, a big basketball family that routinely commanded the concrete at parks in Rockaway and Broad Channel.
“I just played basketball all the time,” Tubridy said. “All of my cousins are basketball players. We would just be outside all the time, playing basketball pickup games. … We could probably [arrange] a five-on-five, just from making phone calls.”
Five of Tubridy’s older cousins went on to play college basketball.
“They all went Division I, they were all elite athletes, but they helped me out,” Tubridy says. “They always looked out for me, they still come to my games, and it’s nice. It’s nice to have a big family.”
Many were there to watch Dowling College’s Tubridy on February 7, at a home game versus Concordia College that began with a small ceremony to honor Cousin No. 6. Tubridy had scored her 1000th at the previous game versus Mercy College and head coach Joe Pellicane presented her with a ball on which “Molly Tubridy, 1000 Points” was proudly inscribed.
This has been Tubridy’s best season. A four-year starter, she had scored only 656 of her millennial points before the senior forward is ultimately electrifying 2008-09 season. And as Tubridy got better – “The point guards just gave me the ball this year,” she says – so did her team. The Golden Lions are regionally ranked for the first time in six years.
“I sat on the bench my whole first semester, and my junior year I was captain,” Tubridy says. “The whole [East Coast Conference] has improved. This is the best ECC conference that I’ve played in for four years. Any team can beat anyone.”
As of February 24, Dowling College has built a 12-4 conference record and an 18-7 mark overall, good enough for third place in the ECC and eighth in the regional rankings. On February 28, the Golden Lions will face first-place Queens College in the last game of the regular season – a matchup that, for now, carries the mathematical chances of pulling Dowling into a first-place conference tie.
For Tubridy, this season has overflowed with excitement.
“Probably my favorite moment this year is the turning point we had after we lost to Bridgeport,” she says, referencing her team’s first conference loss a one-point loss, at that – on January 10. “That’s when we started to really play as a team. When we finally lost and we realized it could be taken away from us so quickly, we all pulled together after that. … Coach says you only change when the pain is great enough, and the pain was great enough then.”
Four years after she emerged from Manhattan’s Loyola School and the AAU team of basketball mentor Kevin White, Tubridy is contemplating college graduation. She wants to go to graduate school to study education, and she is considering staying on at Dowling as a volunteer assistant coach.
“Since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to be a coach and a teacher,” Tubridy says. “I’ve never strayed from that course, ever.”
She also feels strongly about finishing her final season in style.
“Honestly, it’s so sad, but I’m happy that we’re trying to end on a positive note. I couldn’t ask for a better group of girls. I feel like a part of me is dying. Basketball was such a big part of my life since I was a little kid. … We’re not really ready to part yet.”
