Sandra Louviere
April 11, 2014Pelicans approach offseason with little resources
April 15, 2014
Sumar Leslie is a Houma native. She’s lived inside of the city limits for the entirety of her young, 24-year life.
But on an average Thursday night at approximately 11:35 p.m., Leslie is never in Terrebonne Parish. She’s instead about 30 miles outside of town at the RaceTrac gas station just across from Hahnville High School in Boutte. Leslie has arrived at that location from Baton Rouge, the city in which she spends most of her time these days. At the small, brightly lit gas station, Leslie is dressed in athletic attire and is fully covered in her own sweat. But even still, she’s full of enthusiasm and life as she reaches the counter with her purchases.
“How you doing, ma’am?” Leslie says with a smile to the clerk as she places her items on the counter – a warmed up, soggy gas station burrito and a couple bottles of water.
“I’m fine,” the clerk says back with a smile. “And you?”
“I’m doing great! I can’t complain,” Leslie replies as the worker scans the items and rings up the total.
Sumar then proceeds to get back on the road and go through the final stages of her day. She lumbers her car through St. Charles Parish and then into Lafourche. She finally ends up back in Houma somewhere around midnight – maybe a little earlier depending on how time is managed.
From there, she takes a shower, calms her body and relaxes her mind from the grind. Her body sometimes aches and throbs with soreness. When it does, she applies ice to the spots in pain.
She fades to sleep somewhere around 2:15 a.m. on Friday morning – the completion of an action-packed day full of travel, action and physicality. She is up pretty early later that day to begin working on her craft again.
But while this day may seem impossible to most, Leslie approaches it all with enthusiasm and pride.
That’s because the young woman is chasing her dream – a lifelong quest to be a thriving overseas basketball player in Europe.
To make that dream a reality, Leslie is playing hoops for the Louisiana Bayou Angels this summer – a professional summer league team based 100-plus miles away in Baton Rouge. The Bayou Angels practice a couple nights a week, which is why Leslie is left juggling life on the road – deprived of the same rest patterns and social lives that others her age would typically enjoy.
She wouldn’t have it any other way.
“My only focus in life right now is to get back overseas and to get another team to call my own,” Leslie said this week before loading up her gear for another trip to Baton Rouge. “I am focused every, single day on getting better and doing everything in my power to make sure that I can be the best player I can be so that I can maximize my potential. The travel and all that, it’s a nuisance, but I’d do it every, single day if I had to. I love the sport and I’m chasing my dream. To me, that’s living. To me, that’s the way to be.”
THE PEDIGREE SPEAKS VOLUMES
Leslie’s name is no stranger to this newspaper, nor any other throughout the Houma-Thibodaux area.
For starters, she is unquestionably the best women’s basketball player in the esteemed history of Vandebilt Catholic High School in Houma. Leslie owns the Lady Terriers’ record for most career points, assists and steals. In all three categories, there isn’t a close second place. During her five-season career, Leslie helped establish Vandebilt as a state power. The success of she and her teammates in the mid-to-late 2000s paved the way for the Lady Terriers’ future state championship team.
The words SUMAR LESLIE are glittered throughout the walls of Vandebilt’s gymnasium. Her likeness is plastered in the Lady Terriers’ locker room. The seventh of Patricia and Raymond Leslie’s eight children, Sumar Leslie remembers high school like it was yesterday, but says the records don’t mean much in her quest for more.
“I don’t ever talk about that stuff,” she said with a laugh. “I’m just being honest. I’m too young to talk about my past. I’m 24. I turned 24 last week. I’m at an age where my future still matters. The records are humbling, but to me, it’s just a mark on a gym wall. I hope someone else breaks them someday. I really, truly mean that. The school deserves that. I’d be so happy to see a great player doing special things and putting their own name on the wall, too. That’d mean more to me than something I did in those days.”
Out of Vandebilt, Leslie signed a scholarship with UL-Monroe where she played for two, drama-filled seasons. She said she didn’t like the demanding, angry temperament of Lady Warhawks coach Mona Martin – a coach that Leslie describes as one she wishes she’d have never played for. Always a free-spirited person, Leslie said she would leave Monroe and come to Houma during holidays and beg God to give her a reason why she should go back to ULM.
She explains that her 18 months there as the most difficult time in her life. Leslie said that it takes a lot to make her sad or upset, but that she was ‘miserable’ and ‘unhappy’ every day as a Warhawk.
“That was never my home,” Leslie said. “Coach Martin’s personality didn’t fit me. I am happy and a peaceful person. I didn’t like the yelling and the manipulation and all of the different things that went on there.
“I wanted to leave after my first year, but my dad told me to give it one more try. So I did. By the time year two came, I had my bags packed and my car halfway down the road by the time they told me that my transfer was approved and I was able to leave. It was time. I needed a new season in life. To wake up miserable every, single day. To go to practice and to hate playing the sport that I love? That was like being in prison to me. I was trapped inside my own body. I was so unhappy. Those days made me the strongest person, because looking back I now know that I’ve been to hell and back and I’m still carrying on.”
Martin was reached this week for comment, but no return call was given. She said at the time of Leslie’s transfer that the guard was “homesick” and that she “decided to go home.”
Leslie found greener pastures in Thibodaux with Nicholls State University – the school with whom she transferred to midway through her sophomore season.
After sitting out for a full season, Leslie played for the Colonels her junior and senior seasons. She broke her hand midway through her junior season, which derailed the team’s efforts in that year.
But after rehabbing and coming back strong, Leslie returned with a vengeance as a senior, leading the Colonels to their first-ever Southland Conference Tournament victory. She averaged 15.8 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game in that 2011-12 season, enough to earn an All-Southland Conference selection.
“What can you say about Sumar Leslie?” Colonels coach DoBee Plaisance said during Leslie’s senior season. “She’s such a unique person. She’s a great person. Our program got better the day she decided to come here. There’s no doubt.”
As she wrapped up her eligibility, professional teams lined up to inquire for her services.
“Everything was aligning itself perfectly,” Leslie said. “But sometimes what you think is God’s hand is really the devil’s trident. I had no idea the nightmare that I would have to endure next to get me where I wanted to go.”
NORWAY SCAM CREATES PUERTO RICO LIFE LESSON
After about two months of fielding interest, Leslie signed a professional contract to play for the Ammerud Queens in Norway on Aug. 13, 2012. The Queens are a professional team in that country’s premier women’s basketball league.
She held an emotion-filled private ceremony in Houma to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. All of her friends and family attended – each in Sumar Leslie basketball shirts and wristbands.
“When I got the call from my consultant about the Queens, I immediately broke into tears and emotions just exploded from my body,” Leslie said. “At that time, I was so hungry for a team. I was praying so long and so hard to find an opportunity. When it happened for me, I just let it all out. I called my mom and I cried like a baby. It was the happiest moment of pure joy and adrenaline that I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
But she never spent a second of her life on Norwegian soil.
About two weeks after signing the deal, Leslie said the team started acting fishy. She said she was receiving emails frequently from a contact claiming to be Patxi Exposito – the team’s real head coach. But phone contact was never offered to Leslie, which made her wonder if she was being conned.
Her suspicions became a nightmare 11 days later when the email address contacting her started asking for money to be sent to a Nigerian Western Union account to cover “registration fees” for the Norwegian league.
She said she sent the team cash once, falling for a lie told to her that the team was in the African country doing scouting. After they immediately asked for more money, she knew that she was being duped.
Leslie said she found the team’s phone number and business office online and called them to see where she stood.
Through that, she talked to the real Patxi Exposito – a woman who had no idea that Sumar Leslie existed. Leslie describes the conversation as, “my heart being stomped.”
Months after the incident, two people were reportedly arrested in Nigeria on charges of scam and wire fraud after they allegedly pulled the same gag on 200-plus other players around the globe.
Leslie has no way of knowing if the people in custody were her conmen. She said no list of scammed players has ever been offered. But she said she takes peace in believing that it was them captured and taken into custody.
“I was conned. I was a part of an awful, vicious scam,” Leslie said. “That email address sent me a contract that was really from that basketball team. It all seemed so real. I got it checked by a lawyer. It was legitimate. But it just wasn’t the real team I talked to.
“I found out at Smoothie Rox here in town. I sat at the table in there for about 50 minutes after I learned what happened. It felt so empty. I was so happy and then I was so drained. I grew up in a loving home. I have a big, happy family. I didn’t necessarily know that people existed who were capable of using someone else to do something like this. This one was new on me, and it hit me hard and motivated me even harder.”
With Norway out of the picture and time running out on the 2012 season, Leslie signed with the San German Atleticas in Puerto Rico.
During that season, Leslie wrote weekly diary columns for the Tri-Parish Times in which she detailed her experiences.
In the weekly pieces, Leslie was vibrant and bright, telling readers that she was loving every minute of her stay in the American territory.
But she said she only did so because she didn’t want her family and friends to worry. Leslie says now that she was living in filth in Puerto Rico and experienced poverty for the first time. She said she was lonesome throughout her stay, often spending hours on the phone with friends and family – just to hear friendly voices.
It didn’t affect her play – the Houma native averaged 12.8 points per game and led the Atleticas to the postseason in her rookie professional season. But Leslie was living in a place that she touts she “wouldn’t wish on her biggest enemy.”
“I was playing basketball and staying busy, so spiritually, I was OK, because I would do anything for basketball,” Leslie said. “And I understand that to call myself a pro is an honor, so I am so grateful to have been there. But I was living in filth. To be in a place with people riding on horses on dirt roads and to not have any sort of modern life around me? It was so tough.
“I remember I had a juicer and a blender with me. I loved both things to death – so much so that I brought them both with me. So I go to practice one day and I come back and there are like a million bugs inside my juicer and blender. I threw both away. I didn’t eat their food. I didn’t ever go anywhere. Everything was so dirty. I felt dirty. My clothes felt dirty. I went there as a knee-jerk, panic reaction when Norway fell through. And I’m grateful I did, because it was a shot to be a pro and live my dream. But being there really makes you feel blessed for what you do and don’t have here in Houma – that’s for sure. Those people there have nothing. They would kill to have our life.”
After playing in Puerto Rico in the summer and fall of 2012, Leslie returned home. She’s been here ever since, training for another opportunity as Europe’s economy falters and only the most elite get a chance to travel to play.
ONE LAST CHANCE TO FIND PEACE
“Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Dribble, dribble, dribble! OK, good job,” a sharp voice echoes inside of a small church gymnasium in Scotlandville – a quaint community just north of Baton Rouge.
This is Leslie’s new home for the summer – New Light Baptist Church. This is the gymnasium where the Bayou Angels work out in preparation for their upcoming season, which begins on May 17.
The voice echoing through the gym is that of the team’s coach Riley Harbor III – a Baton Rouge native and veteran policeman who dedicates his time annually to coaching the aspiring pros. His commands of “tap, tap, tap,” are his instructions to Leslie as she does a dribbling drill for the first time.
“Good job, Sumar,” Harbor spats to Leslie as she wraps up the drill. “That’s what we’re looking for right there.”
The Bayou Angels play in the Women’s Blue Chip Basketball League – a national league that employs more than 50 teams throughout the country.
The Baton Rouge-based team is among the best in the entire country. Under Harbor’s watch, the team has won one championship and finished as the league’s runner-up on two occasions.
But more importantly than wins and losses is the exposure the Angels get on the global circuit. In the past three years, 10 Bayou Angels players have gone on to play basketball in Europe.
That’s exactly where Leslie hopes to be five months from now. She landed on the team after her consultant contacted Harbor and requested a try-out.
That phone call came a month after the team held its official try-outs for new players. But because Harbor recognized Leslie’s name from her college days, the coach gave her a shot.
Leslie took the opportunity by the horns and broke the door down, earning her way onto the team. She will be joined throughout the summer with a mix of about a dozen other players with professional experience like former LSU standout Taylor Turnbow and former Louisville All-Conference performer Lori Nero.
“She’s fit in nicely here,” Harbor said. “She’s well liked and she’s become a member of the family. We only keep people who fit in. And Sumar has fit in.”
The team begins its season on May 17 with a home game against the New Orleans Riders – another team in the WBCBL.
From there, they play a two-month schedule across the Gulf South before giving way to the 2014 WBCBL Playoffs, which will take place in New Orleans.
Leslie has been with the team for about a month now, commuting to and from – spending time, effort and money to make it all possible.
The Bayou Angels do not pay their players in cash. They pay purely in exposure and opportunity.
But that’s just fine with Leslie, who said she is finally at peace with where her career is headed. Now 24 and with a lot of stories to tell, the Houma native said she will do “anything” to land in a steady, safe place in Europe to continue to play.
It is that dream that keeps her stomach filled with burritos from RaceTrak and her mind at ease, despite long, hard hours.
It’s that dream that is powering and inspiring her life.
“I just want a fair shot,” Leslie said. “It’s the only way I’ll ever be at peace. I just want to play this summer and see if I can get another opportunity. I believe in God. If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, that’s great, too. But I will stop at nothing to make sure I get back out there. I’m dying to play. I want this so bad. I am so excited to be a Bayou Angel. I am so grateful to see where this leads me.”
Houma native Sumar Leslie holds a basketball after working out on Friday afternoon. Leslie recently signed with the Louisiana Bayou Angels for the 2014 season – a pro team in Baton Rouge. After playing there, Leslie hopes to play pro ball overseas.
