Our own Ticha Penicheiro is a Women’s Basketball Hall-of-Famer in the the Class of 2019.

Old Dominion’s No. 21 will be enshrined into the Knoxville Hall on June 8 along with Beth Bass, Ruth Riley, Joan Cronan, Nora Lynn Finch, Valerie Still and Carolyn Bush Roddy.

Her WNBA career is legend, but long before the Portuguese point guard starred in Sacramento and later Los Angeles and Chicago, she belonged to us here in Norfolk, where we knew her on a first-name basis.

She’s always been simply Ticha to us. We remember her with bangs and before she had them.

Ticha with Wendy Larry

“She captivated and captured this community,” said Wendy Larry, who coached Penicheiro from 1994-98, seasons when the Lady Monarchs reached the Sweet 16 twice and the national title game once.

When I first started typing her name, I’d have to remind myself how to spell it using the Old McDonald song as an aid: That’s “e-i-e-i-o.” Pretty soon I was writing it so much it was an easy as A-B-C.

Ticha was the heart of Lady Monarchs basketball, the ace behind Old Dominion’s most magical season in the last 30 years and part of a team that the Hampton Roads community embraced with a fervor rarely displayed for a women’s sports team. Conference games were all blowouts then, but watching Ticha, alongside Clarisse Machanguana and Mery Andrade, was the best show in town.

She wasn’t just fun for fans. She was must-see-viewing long before the days of modern technology (imagine all those no-look passes going viral if she played today). These days live stats are provided on press row. Back then, we sportswriters kept our own books, but looking down to write meant you might miss a moment of Ticha’s sleight-of-hand. I was so busy recording a defensive stop that I didn’t see Ticha’s bounce pass between her legs that reached Machanguana for a layup.

“Did you just see what Ticha just did?” my Richmond Times-Dispatch buddy Vic Dorr asked incredulously.

If you blinked, you’d miss it.

Admittedly, it took Ticha a while to adjust to the college game.

“Back home we don’t have all these plays. Here we have like 40 plays!” she lamented her sophomore year. “When I got here I was like, `What? We have a play for fast break?’ Back home it’s like, ‘Ticha, get the ball and go.’ ”

Ticha elevated ODU’s program to a level it hadn’t reached since the glory days of the 1980s. The Lady Monarchs notched No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament twice in her four years. They didn’t just compete against the heavies — they beat them. They crushed a Texas team coached by Jody Conradt, forcing the Longhorns leader, who is also in the WBHOF, to call three consecutive timeouts to deal with Ticha. Twice with Ticha steering the ship, ODU eliminated No.1-ranked teams in Georgia and Stanford. In fact the Cardinal lost just twice during the 1996-97 season, both times to ODU.

Her performance during a 1997 regular season game against Tennessee — 25 points, eights assists, nine boards, five steals — produced an electric night, the only win Larry would ever get over Tennessee.

Indeed, a few months later the  nine-point loss in the national final to the Lady Vols was crushing; Pat Summitt built Tennessee’s game plan around keeping fresh legs on Penicheiro. Back then, there was question if Ticha would play one more year or skip to the pros, and when she announced she was coming back, it felt like Christmas in April in Norfolk. One more year to savor Ticha, who led ODU over ranked teams that included Illinois, Purdue, Louisiana Tech and Texas Tech.

It seemed like every little girl at a Lady Monarchs game wore No. 21 her senior season.

Ticha’s return gave ODU the opportunity to take a 10-day overseas trip to her homeland, Portugal, a rare in-season international break that allowed her to show off her hometown, ‎Figuerira da Foz. She hopped off the plane, stunned by the waiting TV cameras in Lisbon and asked Andrade if some big soccer star was in the airport.

She never dreamed the lights and cameras were for her.

Picture a cross between California’s Pacific Highway and the cobble-stoned strip of hotels and palm trees in Miami Beach and that’s Figueira da Foz – the name is inspired from a fig tree sitting at the mouth of a river. Everybody knows Ticha there, it seems, and when she played in an exhibition against her old club during that Old Dominion trip, the fans chanted her name.

“TEEE-sha!”

Her last game in an ODU uniform unfolded in a late-morning Sweet 16 matchup at the University of Dayton. ODU lost to NC State by a point. Ticha drained her final collegiate shot, a 3, but the Lady Monarchs were upset. She walked off slowly and somehow, just for a moment, I remember thinking that was the end of college basketball as we know it.  Ticha wasn’t coming back to Norfolk to play anymore. Later, I asked Wendy how it felt to graduate someone so instrumental to your program and she, of course, reminded me it came with the job.

But, yes, she said. It’s hard to lose Ticha.

I sat alongside Ticha on the airplane to Newark, N.J., en route to the WNBA draft. She slept most of the way and we deplaned for a courtesy car that whisked us to the Meadowlands. I was the only press person there, and I watched as Ticha got her makeup done and chatted up her contemporaries. There was a green room, and she looked right at home surrounded by the best in the game.

Ticha was selected second overall  — and how appropriate it was that she went from being an Old Dominion Lady Monarch to a Sacramento Monarch.

Penicheiro left ODU as the school’s all-time leader in steals with 591, the second-highest total in NCAA history at the time. In assists, her career mark of 939 is 23 shy of Nancy Lieberman’s school record,  fifth all-time nationally back then. Her jersey hangs in the rafters at the Constant Center, and she is in the school’s Hall of Fame.

It was LadySwish’s honor to nominate Ticha for the ultimate prize in our sport, induction into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Concluding here by sharing that nomination packet:

Ticha Penicheiro

Collegiate Accolades: Kodak All-American, 1997, 1998; WBCA All-American, 1997, 1998; AP All-American, 1997, 1998; Wade Trophy winner, 1998; Naismith finalist, 1997, 1998; Named to Colonial Athletic Association’s Silver Anniversary Team; two-time Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Year, 1996, 1997; CAA Rookie of the Year, 1994

Professional Accolades: Played in the WNBA from 1998-2012 for the Sacramento Monarchs, Los Angeles Sparks and Chicago Sky;

Four-time WNBA All Star, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002; two-time WNBA First Team (1999, 2000)

Set the WNBA career assist record with 2,599 (now ranks second to Sue Bird);

First player in WNBA history to record 2,000 assists (2008);

Holds the top spot in WNBA for: assists per game (5.72); holds top three spots for most assists per season; holds four of the top five sports for most assists in a single game; holds mark for most assists per game (10 on July 10, 2003, Sacramento at San Antonio)

Named in the WNBA Top 20@20, a list of the WNBA’s top 20 players of all-time in celebration of the league’s 20th anniversary.

Led the Sacramento Monarchs to their first-ever WNBA championship in 2005, starting 33 games and averaging 5.7 points per game, 4.4 assists per game and 1.4 steals per game.

Essay

Numbers only tell part of the story of point guard Ticha Penicheiro. Even as a 16-year-old on the Portuguese National Team, she was a magician on the court, master of the no-look pass. Her artistry created a magic that even the casual fan could appreciate, enough that it was commonplace for little girls to wear her No. 21 Old Dominion jersey in the stands of the Field House in Norfolk, Va. Penicheiro was the catalyst for Old Dominion’s resurgence in the women’s game, the player who inspired a Portuguese pipeline that elevated one of the pioneer programs of the game back into national relevance. Because of her, ODU landed stars Clarisse Machanguana and Mery Andrade, both All-Americans who were Penicheiro‘s teammates on the Portuguese national team. In an era of superpowers, ODU was a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament in 1997 and 1998. The Lady Monarchs were the national runner-up in 1997; Penicheiro was named to the Final Four All-Tournament Team. The first international player to win the Wade Trophy the following year left ODU as the all-time leader in steals and ranks second to Nancy Lieberman in assists. Her No. 21 hangs from the rafters at ODU’s current home, the Constant Center. ODU compiled an 82-8 record in Penicheiro‘s final three seasons.