Ticha Penicheiro almost didn’t pick up the phone.
“I’d say 90 percent of the time I don’t take phone calls if I don’t know the number,” said the Old Dominion great who went on to be one of the most decorated players in WNBA history, playing for Sacramento, Los Angeles and Chicago.
“Hi, Ticha. You don’t know me. This is Ceal Barry. . . . ” started the former Colorado coach and Women’s Basketball Hall-of-Famer on the other end of the line.
“I know you,” Penicheiro said, and then the news set in.
Penicheiro was announced as one of 12 finalists for the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame on Jan. 11. The news that she is in the Hall of Fame is now official. After receiving the phone call from Barry and an email, Penicheiro received the official letter from the committee on Monday in her Miami mailbox.
“It’s surreal,” she said. “Growing up, I didn’t dream about it because I didn’t even know there was a Hall of Fame. I’m just completely humbled by it.I never thought about it in a million years, and it’s funny, because I always tell the youth, especially little girls to ‘Dream big and go for their dreams.’ But this is completely out of my radar. I never played for any accolades. I played because I truly loved the game and I played to win championships and to have fun. This is definitely something that is completely surreal. I’m very proud and very, very honored to enter such a prestigious Hall.”
Coach Wendy Larry knew from the first time she laid eyes on Penicheiro just how special she was.
“What really impressed me was how well she knew the game and what a great teammate she was,” Larry said. “I knew when Allison Greene said that this kid was really special at 14 that she was worth going overseas to take a look.”
From the first conversation, it was always about the team, which impressed Larry. From the time she played in her first game, it seemed that Hampton Roads was in love with the flashy point guard who seemed light years ahead of the opposition.
“One of the things that absolutely fascinated me was how she captivated the community and captured the community,” Larry said. “I learned so much from her in that regard. I think there was a piece of me that made her think it was important from the beginning. I knew she was so special, not just as a player but as a person, and she had that personality that people just adored.”
Penicheiro, today a player agent, has visited the Naismith Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, but never set foot in the Knoxville Hall, which opened in 1999. Last year she watched reports of Tina Thompson, Katie Smith and Chamique Holdsclaw being enshrined. “The thought crossed my mind then, but I was never into individual accolades. They embarrass me in a way. I don’t like the whole hoopla and focus on me because I was always about team and playing within a team. There’s definitely no way I could have gotten there by myself — especially the way I played!”
While her WNBA career will dominate most headlines about this announcement, don’t think Penicheiro has forgotten her time wearing No. 21 for Old Dominion and leaving the school as its all-time leader in steals and second in assists.
Penicheiro admits when she arrived in Norfolk for the first time, she didn’t dream she’d live in this country. “Now I’m an American citizen,” she said, noting she divides her time between her homes in Miami and Maryland with regular trips to Portugal. “Old Dominion is where everything started for me. The fact that everything was so perfect there. It still hurts to this day that we didn’t win the championship in ’97, but besides that, I was very lucky.”
Minus the Internet, she didn’t research colleges. She only wanted to go to ODU. “I was so mesmerized by everything,” she said. “The site of the campus, the site of the Fieldhouse. To me everything was so great.
“What sold me was they took me to Virginia Beach and I’m a beach girl. They took me to the water and they took me to eat seafood and I was like, ‘Where do I sign?’ ”
Penicheiro took no other visits.”I have no regrets,” she said. “I would have done everything the same all over again. Old Dominion was my first stop and it was home to me. I made friends for life.”