Gold Rush: A Shining Star
12/2/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
This article was originally published in the November edition of Gold Rush.
By Matt Batts
Three years ago as a freshman at Wake Forest, Milan Quinn had high expectations for herself. The Mega-7 Conference Player of the Year during her senior year at Philip O. Berry Academy of Technology, Quinn expected to have an immediate impact on the Demon Deacons women's basketball team as soon as she stepped on campus.
Instead, she was met with a number of tough challenges.
"It was kind of a struggle at first," Quinn said of her freshman year. "Coming from high school, everybody is the best player on their team, and then you get here, it's kind of discouraging not playing."
Quinn appeared in 31 games during the 2013-14 season, starting 14 games. She averaged 3.3 rebounds a game and finished the season with just 62 total points.
Playing behind Wake Forest's prized forward Dearica Hamby — who, as a junior during that season, led the ACC in both scoring and rebounding — Quinn could have easily relegated herself to the shadows of Hamby's star.
Quinn, though, chose to use Hamby's talent and her leadership as a guide to college basketball.
"I just tried to use that as a positive and look at her as a role model," Quinn said. "I tried to just look and see what was making her successful and how I could use that to improve my own game."
Over the course of her sophomore and junior years, Quinn steadily increased her offensive and defensive contributions, scoring 128 points in 2014-15 with 81 defensive rebounds. She followed that up with a big season in 2015-16 with 354 points and 300 total rebounds, 194 on the defensive side of the ball.
Now a senior in 2016-17, Quinn is a star in her own right and a model for the way hard work and dedication pay off – The Wake Way.
"I couldn't be more proud of Milan," head coach Jen Hoover said. "She has been a joy since she got to campus. She's just continued to get better every single year. And that's what we want every one of our players to do, is to develop from wherever they came in and add to their game every year.
"She's always had a great attitude, she's a great leader for us. I couldn't be more proud or happy for a kid just to see that kind of success."
A 6-1 forward, Quinn credits a summer of hard workouts in 2015 as the real turning point for her performance. Quinn and Hoover both agree that confidence plays a major factor in how she approaches the game and performs on the court.
"She's a kid that once she has confidence, she's really hard to guard," Hoover said. "She exudes this confidence about herself, and the key for her is keeping her confidence at a high level."
Off the court, Quinn has her sights set on the medical field. A Health and Exercise Science major, Quinn said she intends to take a gap year after graduation before applying to med school, which she hopes to attend by 2018.
And if an opportunity arises for Quinn to play basketball professionally? Well, she says she hasn't given it much thought. Hoover, though, thinks she has a good chance to play overseas, if that's an opportunity she wants to pursue.
"She's a beautiful kid, and that's inside and outside," Hoover said of Quinn's future. "The sky is the limit for a young lady like that."
In regards to the outlook on the 2016-17 season, Quinn said "it just feels different this year. I'm really excited."
Quinn's goals include maintaining her status as one of the ACC's most prolific rebounders and helping the team "earn some respect in this conference."
While she's got her for one last year, Hoover said that Quinn will play an important role during the 2016-17 season as an obvious stalwart on the court but also as a role model for teammates on and off the court.
"I think it's really important, especially for young kids that are watching," Hoover said. "Because Milan, when you look at her story, it's a true story of a blue-collar work kid. She just working and working so when that opportunity came, she was ready.
"She's just such a great representative of what it truly means to be a Demon Deacon."
