LAUNCESTON Tornadoes 1995 point guard Debbie Black is excited to be back in town and renewing acquaintances with her teammates 20 years after their national championship success.
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The 49-year-old who hails from Philadelphia is now in her third year as head coach at Eastern Illinois University after a distinguished nine-year WNBA career in the US following her stint with the Tornadoes in 1995.
‘‘It’s been 20 years so it’s been a long time and feels like a lifetime ago, but it brings back great memories and it is very rare that you get to finish a season with a championship win,’’ Black said.
‘‘I’ve played a lot of years and I don’t have many seasons when I’ve had that, so it is a special time for me just seeing the girls and being back where we made I think a kind of magical season.’’
Black received a call from the Tornadoes when the club started in its inaugural SEABL season in 1994 while she was playing as a US import in Hobart for the Tassie Islanders WNBL team of the day, where she stayed for six years.
‘‘The first year we established ourselves and the second year we won the national championship and it was kind of my stepping stone to be able to go back to the states and play nine years of WNBA,’’ she said.
‘‘We weren’t the best talented team and didn’t have all these great athletes but were just your blue-collar, hard-working team that did what we had to get done, and I really enjoyed playing with them because of how they played.
‘‘What they did was something that I’ve always done, and that is maximise their potential – they played as hard as they could and that’s all I have ever done, putting it all out on the floor, and that’s why I enjoyed playing with the Tornadoes.’’
Black was the shortest player in WNBA history at only five feet and two and a half inches tall but developed a reputation for her fitness, energy, intensity and toughness and a relentless defence that earned nicknames like ‘‘The Pest’’ and ‘‘The Gnat’’.
‘‘I played you from one end of the court to the other and was relentless – I had to be because of my size, and I think I was the best-conditioned athlete when I played and if I wasn’t being a pest I wasn’t doing my job,’’ she said.
She coached current Tornadoes US import Emilee Harmon at Ohio State University and said she was a great, hard-working player and was glad she had made her way to the Torns.
Harmon said of Black: ‘‘She was an excellent coach and was always the most intense person in the room.
‘‘I’ve heard stories about her and seen videos of her when she played, and she coaches the same way – full on and 110 per cent.’’