At U-Md., Doron's Risk Had Its Reward

Senior Shay Doron said she took a "pretty big risk" in choosing to play for Maryland. The three-time team captain led the team to a national title. (By Preston Keres -- The Washington Post)

When Shay Doron first set foot in College Park, there was no Comcast Center, no national championship banner. Doron had only Maryland Coach Brenda Frese's word that the Terrapins would one day be among the elite programs in the country.

The feisty guard from Israel by way of New York's Christ the King Regional High School was the first player to take a chance on the energetic young coach, to share her vision, and together they revitalized a program that had faded into obscurity. This evening, No. 6 Maryland will play top-ranked Duke before the second women's sellout of the season at Comcast Center. It will be Doron's final home game, and she reminisced recently about how far the program had come in four seasons.

"You know the distance from here to China? Triple that," Doron said. "You can't even compare it. The great thing is, I'm leaving it in good hands."

Doron had plenty of options other than the Terrapins, some much more attractive. She could have picked an established program that provided more certainty for NCAA tournaments and national championships. But during her recruiting visit, which included a "hard-hat" tour of Comcast Center, Doron sensed Maryland was the place for her.

"I wanted to go somewhere that hadn't been the best and hadn't won championships," Doron said. "I wanted to become part of something that would become a championship. . . . I didn't want to go sit at a U-Conn. or Duke for two years and then play for two years. I wanted to play right away and make an impact right away. I knew I could do that coming here."

It was an idealistic choice, one that Doron's parents feared she might regret.

"At first my parents were like, 'How are you going to handle it if you guys start losing?' Because I'm not the best loser," Doron said. "I've never had to experience four or five losses in a row. That's never happened to me anywhere. And I was like: 'You know, you're right. Good God, we might win 10 games and I might be miserable. Who knows?' Everything is a risk in life. This one was a pretty big risk."

Maryland ended up winning more games than it lost in Doron's first year, finishing 18-13 and reaching the NCAA tournament's second round for the first time in 11 years. From that point, the Terrapins took off, and Doron has been a big part of their renaissance, indelibly etching her name in the record books.

She is the Terrapins' Cal Ripken, playing in a school-record 128 games. The three-time team captain also is the school's second-most prolific scorer with 1,812 points and ranks among the top 10 in 11 career categories. Doron, along with fellow senior Aurelie Noirez, compose the most successful four-year class in Maryland history, winning 99 games. Yet as proud as she is of these individual accomplishments, they pale in comparison to winning the national championship.

"The one thing that's important to me is that banner," Doron said. "Those [records] are fun and nice but records are meant to be broken, and they probably will be with the amount of talent Maryland is recruiting now."

These days, on a roster filled with McDonald's all-Americans, Doron has become more of a complementary player. Her scoring average of 11.9 points per game is the lowest it's been during her career. But even as her scoring has decreased, she has found other ways to help make this team successful and has developed into a better all-around player in the process.

"As the talent around her has improved, I think she's really grown," Duke Coach Gail Goestenkors said. "Her freshman year she took good shots, she took bad shots, she took all the shots because she needed to. . . . Now her play has really improved because she knows when she needs to take games over and she knows when somebody else is hot."

Asked what she will miss most about Doron, Frese said: "Oh, goodness. Where do I begin? I think the biggest thing is her personality, the way she handles herself. She's one of our biggest ambassadors. . . . She responds to every letter she gets. Of any player I've ever coached, she understands that other side of it. I think that's why she's so popular."

Soon Doron's time in College Park will end. She hopes not to cry during the ceremony honoring the seniors but feels certain she will become emotional after the game.

"It's something I've really enjoyed doing, and it's coming to an end," Doron said. "It's been my life the last four years. I think the hardest part will be leaving my teammates. . . . I came here and started it, and I'm sure it's going to continue. I've got a lot of pride in Maryland. I would love to see this continue and win more championships."