By Joseph Staszewski
When Kia Wright first stepped on the court for the Red Storm, coach Kim Barnes Arico didn’t know she had the player that would change the fortunes of her team and the entire St. John’s women’s basketball program.
Wright was still physically recovering from an ACL injury and adapting mentally after transferring from national power UConn. Barnes Arico, now the head coach at Michigan, remembers thinking Huskies coach Geno Auriemma had gotten it wrong with Wright.
“The first times I watched her in our practice I was like, ‘Man, this kid is not a Connecticut kid. She can’t play. What was Geno thinking?’” Barnes Arico said.
It quickly became evident how special a player and leader Wright was once she rounded into form and sat out a year for transferring. Barnes Arico remembers her almost never missing a layup in practice and called her the best defender she’s ever coached.
St. John’s doubled its win total from the previous season. It won 20 games for the first time in 17 years duringWright’s first season in 2004-05. A year later she averaged 14.8 points per game to help the Red Storm reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1988. St. John’s nearly knocked off eventual national champions Maryland in the second round. Wright scored 23 points and dished out nine assists.
“She helped change the face of St. John’s women’s basketball and really put St. John’s back on the map,” Barnes Arico said.
That accomplishment and her stellar career earned Wright induction into the St. John’s University Athletic Hall of Fame Feb.22. She ranks fifth on St. John’s all-time scoring charts with 1,536 points and is the only player in program history to record 1,500 points and 400 assists in a career.
“Once I met the girls and saw the potential in the program I just knew something special could happen there,” Wright said.
Wright was shocked and honored when she was told she was going to be inducted. It has also brought a sense of closure to her playing career. Injuries kept Wright from ever playing ball professionally after St. John’s. She had herniated disks in college, a torn meniscus after graduation and a torn Achilles three days before a WBNA free agent camp in 2012. Opportunities to play in Croatia and Puerto Rico also fell through.
“I questioned why me,” Wright said. “God gave me this talent. Why am I not about to pursue my dream? I struggled after college for a while. With this Hall of Fame induction it’s evident that it wasn’t my path to play professionally.”
Wright, now an assistant women’s basketball coach at Adelphi University, added she is happy just looking back on the impact she made at St. John’s, which was considered the worst women’s program in the country when Barnes Arco took over in 2002. It’s now reached five straight NCAA tournaments and a Sweet 16 spot in 2012 because of the foundation and message players like Kia Wright sent to the kids who came after her.
“I can look back and say I made an impact on people and the game of basketball,” she said. “I’m complete. I’m happy.”
She showed going to one of the power programs isn’t always the best fit even if you are a high level player. You can come to St. John’s and win and have a career that gets national attention.
“We got that class in 2009 that was mostly all local kids, which was due to a kid like Kia taking a chance on a place like St. John’s,” Barnes Arico said. “It was not only taking a chance, but then proving you can be one of the best teams in the country.”
Seeing St. John’s continue to win makes Wright look back even more fondly on her time and her “feisty” team that got it all started.
“I’m pretty happy to see where the program is now,” Wright said. “I’m very proud, especially for the girls who took a chance to come to St. John’s and keep their tradition going.”
The tradition she helped start.
