Former
Lewis-Clark State College women’s
basketball player Ashley Baker is
finding life interesting as part of a
pro basketball team in Slovakia.
Baker, a
6-foot-3 post from Omak, Wash., finished
her four-year playing career at LCSC
last season and is now a member of the
Club Slovakia/Poprad squad, which is
located in Poprad, a city in Slovakia
with a population of around 60,000. She
and the team will open the season on
Oct. 10 against a team from Sweden.
Baker
finished as the Warriors’ all-time
leading rebounder with 1,227 board,
nearly 500 more than the next person on
the list. She had seasons of 328 and 327
rebounds, which rank second and third on
the single-season list.
Baker also
stands second on the Warrior all-time
career list in field goals (834) and is
third in points (2,015) and free throws
(407). This past season, she averaged
team highs of 15.6 points and 8.5
rebounds per game and earned second-team
NAIA All-America honors after being a
third-team choice her junior season.
Baker also
was a three-time all-Frontier Conference
selection and was a second-team
selection her freshman year. She helped
LCSC to a 31-3 record last year and the
conference’s regular-season title.
During her
career, Baker collected 46
double-doubles in scoring and rebounding
(achieving at least 10 points and 10
rebounds in a game).
Baker says
the style of play is much different in
Slovakia than it was at LCSC. She says
the style of play is much more
guard-oriented and jokes that her coach
thinks that Baker is a 100-pound
fast-breaking guard instead of a
muscular post player. She says she’s
been working on her passing, dribbling,
and outside shooting.
“Anyway,
the team is pretty good and it will be
interesting as to see what we will be
like come our first game,” Baker says.
Baker says
that Sadio Sangare, who played for
Oklahoma City University, also is on the
team, along with 36-year-old Andrea
Kuklova, who is from Slovakia and played
in the WNBA.
Baker says
there are 10 players on the team and the
squad practices 4-6 hours a day.
