Kiwi star prepared to wait to realise WNBA dream
Kiwi basketball star Charlisse Leger-Walker is putting her shot at making hoops history in the WNBA on hold while she recovers from a serious knee injury.
Leger-Walker has officially withdrawn from consideration for this month’s WNBA draft and has announced she is entering college basketball’s transfer portal to play a fifth and final year at that level instead.
But that will not be at Washington State, where she has*played all four years of her NCAA basketball so far. The 22-year-old from Waikato has been a standout throughout her time with the Cougars and was tipped to be a high choice in the upcoming WNBA draft until her season was ended prematurely by an ACL tear in January.
Leger-Walker detailed her departure from Pullman in a social media post yesterday, with confirmation that she was entering the transfer portal.
“This was not how I envisioned my career as a Coug coming to an end, but being a Coug has been one of the greatest periods of my life,” she wrote.
The Tall Ferns regular had surgery on her knee in February and was expected to face a long rehabilitation that would rule her out of the upcoming WNBA season, which starts in May. She was tipped by some pundits to be a top-10 pick in the upcoming draft.
She is bidding to become just the second New Zealander to play in the WNBA after two-time Olympian and Tall Ferns legend Megan Compain played the inaugural season of the league in 1997 for the Utah Starzz.
Leger-Walker was averaging 13.2 points, 6.5 rebounds and 5.1 assists for the Cougars through 21 games this season, and was named to the All-Pac-12 First Team for the fourth time in her career.
Women’s college basketball in the US is riding a massive surge of interest with the current NCAA tournament drawing unprecedented viewing numbers. Tuesday’s Elite Eight matchup between superstar Caitlin Clark’s Iowa and Louisiana State University averaged a record 12.3 million viewers on ESPN, making it one of the most-viewed games in any sport other than NFL football over the past year.