Former Meadowdale star is grace under pressure
Published 11:08 pm Saturday, February 23, 2008
SEATTLE — She handles a basketball with the same care a jeweler takes with a precious stone.
When the ball is in Quinn Brewe’s hands, it is safe and secure. And highly unlikely to wind up in an opposing player’s grasp.
It was her mother who impressed upon her the importance of every possession. “My mom coached me growing up,” said Quinn, who went on to become a stellar player at Meadowdale High School, “and I really took that to heart from the beginning.”
Kelly Brewe taught her daughter well. Quinn has an astonishing knack for not making mistakes with a basketball. It is but one of the things that make her the solid player she is.
“She handles pressure extremely well,” said Dan Kriley, the women’s coach at Seattle University. “She doesn’t get rattled. She’s cool, calm, and composed. A winner.”
Kriley just wishes he could play her more. Say 35 minutes a game.
As it is, Brewe averages just over half of that. It is what she does in those 18 minutes that stirs visions of “what if?”
What if she weren’t, as her coach put it, “basically running around on half a leg?” What if she didn’t have to sit out two practices a week to rest her pain-racked right foot? What if she could play more than four minutes at a time in a game?
What if? What if? What if?
Kriley doesn’t like to consider the hypothetical. “It’s not fair to her or to us,” he said.
Nor does Brewe care to think about the kind of numbers she would be producing if she were healthy. “That’s in a perfect world,” she said, “and I feel real lucky to be where I am.”
Where she is is a number of games ahead of where she was this time a year ago. Then, she had to quit playing after 10 games to have two cysts removed from her right foot. She also had some bone “floating around in the foot” that had to be cleaned out.
“On top of that,” she said, “I had some early arthritis in my foot.”
Not to mention that she played with a broken wrist for three weeks without even realizing it was fractured. “You just kind of take the hits as part of the game,” she said, “and move on.”
You don’t call it a career, though, as one doctor suggested she do. “You take it day-by-day,” Brewe said. “While it’s frustrating, I’m thankful just to be out on the court.”
The Redhawks are thankful for the time she’s been able to give them. One cyst has come back and the arthritis still gives her pain, but despite this, she leads the team in rebounding (nearly six a game), she’s No.4 in scoring (almost eight points a game), she’s one of the top shooters (49.3 percent) and she is the team’s most cautious caretaker of the basketball, averaging only one turnover every 29 minutes.
There is a word for a player such as her: efficient.
It’s amazing what she’s done with limited practice.
“Certainly,” Kriley said. “We all know what kind of player she can be. It’s just that she can’t practice.”
And that’s frustrating for the coach and the player.
“It’s tough because you want to be out on the court building chemistry with your teammates,” Brewe said. “I have to be that much more mentally focused when I do get on the court to make the best use of my time.”
If she can give just 18 minutes a game, the Redhawks will get 18 minutes of all-out effort from her. “She really takes it personally to bring the best she can with the minutes given,” said her mother, who was a good player for Seattle University back in the 1980s.
The week before Christmas, Quinn was effective in back-to-back victories in Hawaii, totaling 25 points and 15 rebounds. That earned her Player of the Week in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. A month later, she was SU’s Featured Student Athlete of the Week for her accomplishments in basketball and academics. An English major, she carries a 3.8 grade-point average and will receive her undergraduate degree this fall with an eye on pursuing a law degree.
Brewe began her college career at Seattle Pacific University, helping the Falcons reach the championship game of the NCAA Division II tournament in 2005.
That fall, seeking what she deemed a “better fit academically,” she moved crosstown to Seattle U. but was only allowed to practice with the team her first year because she had transferred within the conference.
When Quinn got back on the court last year, her mother said some people questioned why her daughter wasn’t putting up bigger numbers. What they didn’t realize were the physical problems she was enduring.
“Not everybody knows why you’re struggling,” Kelly said. “You just go do what you’ve got to do.”
Quinn had committed herself to playing basketball, despite her foot problems, and she made good on that commitment for as long as she could. “She’s a reliable kid,” her mother said. “If she says she’s going to do something, she’s going to do it.”
And she says she’s going to play basketball again next year (she has one year of eligibility remaining), sore foot or not.
You must have a passion for this game, someone said.
“I do,” she replied. “I love it.”
It shows.
