For the first time since she played grammar school basketball at P.S. 37 Rafael Cordero School in downtown Jersey City, Daisha Simmons is getting a chance to play close to her home, in the general proximity of friends and family, a family that includes a total of eight brothers and sisters.
It’s been a long road for Simmons, traveling first to play high school basketball in the rural community of Peapack-Gladstone in Somerset County at a private school called Gill-St. Bernard’s, taking a series of buses and trains daily to get to the school.
Simmons wasn’t able to gain a ton of attention locally because she played 50 miles west of Hudson County, but she did earn All-State honors at Gill and earned a scholarship to Rutgers University to play for the famed Scarlet Knights’ program.
But after one year in Piscataway, Simmons decided to leave.
“At the time, the team had a lot of other freshmen,” said Simmons, who averaged just 2.4 points per game as a freshman at Rutgers. “With the system she [Rutgers Hall of Fame coach C. Vivian Stringer] plays, it wasn’t the right fit for me.”
So of all places, Simmons decided to transfer to the University of Alabama.
“The assistant coach there recruited me and reached out to me,” Simmons said. “I knew some people there, so I was interested and thought it was the right move for me.”
So Simmons packed up and moved 1,000 miles away from New Jersey and her family in Jersey City.
“It was a little tough, but when I went to high school, that was an hour away and not a lot of people could come to see me,” Simmons said. “At the time, it was a little bit of a culture shock, going from Jersey City to [Tuscaloosa] Alabama, but I already had the experience of being away in high school, so it wasn’t that bad.”
Simmons had to sit out the 2011-2012 campaign due to the NCAA transfer regulations. She returned to action for the 2012-13 season and led Alabama in scoring (12.4 points), assists (nearly four per game) and steals. She earned Southeast Conference Player of the Week honors twice as a freshman and had the first triple-double (points, assists, rebounds) in 15 years for the Crimson Tide when she went off for 37 points, 11 assists and 11 rebounds in a game against Troy.
In 2013-14, Simmons averaged 13.8 points per game, leading the Crimson Tide in scoring once again.
But at the end of the year, Simmons wanted to leave Alabama, after she had already secured her degree in sports management. She wanted to pursue a Master’s degree in sports management, a program that Alabama did not offer, but Seton Hall did. Simmons had one year of eligibility left in NCAA basketball (the year she lost with the transfer to Alabama) and wanted to use it while working toward her Master’s.
“It wasn’t like they didn’t want me,” Simmons said of Alabama. “It’s just that I wasn’t accepted into the program that I wanted to be in. So I had to take a look at other options. I also wanted to put my family first.”
So when Simmons settled on Seton Hall, the coaching staff and athletic department at Alabama became vengeful and would not give Simmons the release form she needed to transfer to Seton Hall.
“As a student-athlete, I should have the right to go wherever I wanted, especially as a graduate student,” Simmons said. “I wanted to go to a school close to home.”
Mergin Sina, Simmons’ high school coach at Gill-St. Bernard’s, did a lot of the legwork to set the wheels in motion for the transfer.
“He’s been like a father to me,” Simmons said of Sina, whose son, Jaren, is a starting guard on the Seton Hall men’s basketball team. “Whether Jaren was there or not, he was going to reach out to them.”
Tony Bozzella, the second-year head coach at Seton Hall, knew that Simmons was looking to finish her college career closer to home.
“I hadn’t been successful in keeping the [New] Jersey girls to stay home,” Bozzella said. “So I worked very hard to get her in. Once she said she wanted to come here, we worked hard for three months. It was a tough run for her, not knowing what was going to happen [with Alabama]. But I knew that if we got her, she could make an impact.”
The battle with Alabama over Daisha’s release dragged on through the summer. The story reached national newspapers. Simmons threatened legal proceedings against Alabama.
“I had no other choice,” Simmons said. “I had to do something. Time was running down. I was concerned about it. I was more concerned with my family situation.”
Daisha’s mother, Christena, is battling a series of chronic illnesses like asthma, arthritis and diverticulitis as she works at a local post office. Her older brother, Chaz, is in end-stage renal failure and goes to receive dialysis regularly as he awaits a kidney transplant.
“I had to come home,” Simmons said. “I had no choice. I had to worry about my family.”
After a grueling three-month period where Simmons didn’t know what her future held, Alabama finally gave into pressure and signed the release waiver, enabling Simmons to transfer and play right away at Seton Hall.
Now back in Jersey City, Simmons is able to take her brother to dialysis and take her mother to work. She’s also able to attend graduate classes and play for the Pirates.
There was never a sense of resentment with the returning players.
“They all welcomed me with open arms,” Simmons said. “It was already a family and I joined right in.”
“You never know when you get a transfer, but Daisha has fit right in,” Bozzella said. “There was never a problem.”
The Pirates own an impressive 19-2 record after going 20-14 last year. A lot of the improvement has to be attributed to Simmons, who is averaging 17.1 points, 5.5 rebounds and almost four assists per game thus far.
“You can see why she’s a great player,” Bozzella said. “No doubt, she could be a professional player, perhaps in the WNBA. She’s not ball dominant, which is good. She’s very unselfish and looks for others. She’s also a tremendous ball defender, perhaps the best ball defender I’ve ever coached. We put a system in with her and she has shown the ability to fit right in.”
Bozzella said that the Pirates, who are on the cusp of being nationally ranked for the first time in nearly 25 years and sit atop the Big East Conference standings, have other talented players, like another Simmons, Ka-Deidre, who is also averaging better than 17 points per game.
What are the odds of a team having two unrelated girls with the same surname leading a college basketball team in scoring?
“I’ve never seen it,” Bozzella said.
“We’re not related, but we’re very close,” Daisha Simmons said of Ka-Deidre, with whom she rooms with when she stays at Seton Hall after late classes. “It’s a great feeling to be able to come in and contribute right away with them.”
As it stands now, the Pirates are headed to their first NCAA Tournament berth since 1995.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” Simmons said. “I’m home. My family can come see me at every home game. I’m really enjoying it. I don’t want it to end. I’m having such a great time. It’s been a real dream. I’ve made it home.”
After this season, Simmons wants to take her MBA and begin a non-profit organization for youths in Jersey City.
It has taken eight years, four schools, thousands of miles and a ton of tears, but Daisha Simmons is now closer to her home in Jersey City, only 16 miles away, compared to 50 in high school, 60 in her first year of college and more than a 1,000 for the next two years of college. She’s come home, no worse for the wear, only a little more battle tested.
And Seton Hall is so very happy about that idea. Coming home has never looked so good.
Jim Hague can be reached at OGSMAR@aol.com.
You can also read Jim’s blog at www.jimhaguesports.blogspot.com.