HER OWN WOMAN

"She wins that's one of her greatest strengths," says Detroit Shock coach Bill Laimbeer about his All-Star forward Swin Cash. "She's a champion. Her work ethic is second to none. I don't say that very often about anybody. She works so hard in practice and the game. She has very good leadership skills. She's willing to listen and that's a great trait to have."

Swintayla Marie Cash grew up listening intently to her mother, Cynthia, a no-nonsense woman who had been quite the fierce basketball player herself.

"She always had kind of an in-your-face, don't-back-down-from-anyone type of attitude," Cash, 24, says. "I think my style of play is definitely attributed to my mother's attitude and her work ethic. Everything we did in life involved survival. You had to be aggressive and outgoing to achieve your goals. For me, the way I play on the court is really aggressive, inyour-face type of defense. Offensively, I'm going to run the floor and try to outwork my man."

Sports came naturally for the 6'2'' Cash, who says, "Everyone in my family was involved in sports in some way or another. I played a lot of sports."

"She started out marching in the drill team," says Cynthia Cash. "She played softball. With the basketball, there was a time she started focusing on it more."

Her mother pointed out that basketball was the means to a college scholarship, and soon enough those words proved true. The summer before ninth grade Cash played in the AAU National Championships.

"Then the next summer, I remember walking into our open gym and Coach [Geno] Auriemma (head coach from the University of Connecticut) was sitting there, even though I was only going into 10th grade," she recalls. "He couldn't talk to me or anything, but it was him over there looking. I knew I was headed in the right direction."

Despite her dedication to improving on the basketball court, Cash also continued to be involved in other sports, most notably track.

"All sports kind of coincide and relate in some ways," she notes. "Whether it's agility or whether it's hand-eye coordination. A lot of different things play a part in making you a great basketball player."

She also worked on being a well-rounded person - including modeling and being a leader in student government.

"My mom was always about being versatile," Cash says. "That's kind of how I got my sense of style and a sense of being a woman off the court - because my mother always taught me about being versatile and never just being what society expects you to be. She not only talked about basketball, she was big on academics, my faith and believing in God 100 percent and who he was for myself. My mom was big on me making a place for myself in this world and not worrying about someone critiquing you. In today's society so many people get caught up in that instead of just being themselves."

Eventually the time to decide on a college was at hand. Cynthia Cash insisted that Swin take all five of her visits.

"She wanted me to experience every single thing and not get influenced by one visit," Cash says. "You can go to one place and get so caught up in the moment you want to go there without really weighing all your options. Sometimes people know that's the place they want to go, but I think until you weigh all your options you're selling yourself short.

"I picked UConn because it was a great program," she adds. "I thought the coaches got the most out of their players academically and also on the court. I was coming in with one of the best recruiting classes (Tamika Williams, Asjha Jones and Sue Bird). I felt so comfortable with all those ladies. I felt that whatever I went through in college, I knew I wouldn't be alone."

From the time they began to practice, Cash knew something great awaited them.

"When we got on the court we were so competitive," she says. "We wanted something so badly we weren't going to back down."

That doesn't mean it was all smooth sailing. Cash, a self-professed "mama's girl," suffered terrible homesickness.

"I was feeling kind of sickly too, knowing she was up there and homesick," admits Cynthia Cash. "I talked to her every day on the phone. That made it a little bit better."

So did good-natured support from her friends. "Tamika Williams was always saying, 'It's time to cut the umbilical cord.' " says Cash.

The first year was rough, as both Cash and Bird dealt with injuries. But their sophomore year everything fell into focus, and the Huskies won a National Championship.

"We were really hungry," she says. "We had standards that we felt we didn't meet the year before. Yes, we had some injuries but we felt like we had something to prove. We worked so hard in that preseason to get ready. We were so focused we didn't feel we could be beat."

All the sweeter was the fact that victory came in her home state of Pennsylvania, with her mother, stepfather, Kevin Menifee, and many other family members and friends in attendance.

"That was the best part," she says. "Any time you achieve a goal, it's exciting. Then your focus turns to repeating."

Unfortunately, that wasn't to be in 2001, as the team saw two starters, Shea Ralph and Svetlana Abrosimova, go down to injuries. That made them all the hungrier to make their senior year unforgettable.

Fueling their own internal fires was the rabid support of Huskies fans. For Cynthia Cash, who often made the eight-hour drive to see home games, it was heart-warming.

"When people walked up to you, they were very nice and telling you how much they appreciated your daughter," she says. "That made me really feel good that she was in a place where she was loved by so many fans. The love of basketball up there in Connecticut is just wonderful."

The Huskies spectacular 39-0 season in 2001-02 is well-known. But true to her commitment to be a fully rounded person, Cash never took her eyes off her academic goals as well. Her major was communications and her minor, political women's studies. She found courses such as Women in Poverty and Welfare Reform fascinating. She also thrived on speech classes and classes in interpersonal communications.

The four seniors were all driven to accomplish their oncourt goals.

"Words didn't need to be said. We all had the same mindset," Cash says. "We all worked so hard in the off-season to prepare for it. For us, it was something that was deserved, and we were going to go out and take it. When there were things Coach Auriemma felt weren't getting done, we knew how to fix them without even saying anything."

She was well-aware that other teams always brought their A games in hopes of notching a victory over the Huskies, so there was no slacking.

At the Final Four in San Antonio, there was a decisive victory over Tennessee and a hard-fought contest over Oklahoma. Along with the team being crowned National Champion, Cash was named Most Outstanding Player.

"I had been struggling in the regionals," she says. "So for me to come out and play the way I did and not get caught up in the previous bad games I had, it was a real emotional time for me."

But one she had little time to dwell on. There was a whirlwind of celebrations, and then came the WNBA draft in which Cash was the number two pick, chosen by the Detroit Shock. While her mother was happy with Detroit's relative proximity to her home in McKeesport, Pa., there was a painful reality - the Shock was a team that didn't win a whole lot of games.

"I had to take it in stride," Cash says. "I prayed on it and just stuck in there. I was in it for the long haul."

After a dismal beginning, things began to look up when Laimbeer took the coaching reins midseason. At the close of the 2002 season, Cash and Laimbeer looked ahead to 2003. First, he planned to move her from power forward to small forward.

"He told me what his ideas were to rebuild this team and turn things around, and I told him I'm going to stick around and hopefully our team will be here," she says.

To be fully prepared she worked out with a trainer and then played with the Springfield Spirit of the NWBL. It played several of its games at the Mohegan Sun arena in Connecticut, which fueled her desire and gave her back her winning edge.

She returned to Detroit ready to do whatever was necessary to change the fate of the team. For starters, Laimbeer told her that she would be the Shock's captain.

"I knew I had to make somebody the lead person, and I might as well pick the hardest working person," Laimbeer explains. "Was there a risk because she was very young to make her our captain? Yes, but the risk was small compared to the upside potential."

Cash was ready to shoulder the responsibilities.

"The biggest thing for me was being very selfless and putting the team above myself," she notes. "If that meant sacrificing individual goals that some players love to relish and receive, then that's what it had to be. At the end of the day, I felt like our team goals were more important than any individual accolade that I could have received.

"There were so many small things that being a leader entails," she continues. "You get the credit when you win, but at the same time, you have to be able to step up and understand when you're losing to take the credit for that, too. For me, it was about making sure everybody was happy. Doing all the little things that no one really will see in the stat sheet."

"There were times where she took it upon herself to fix problems," Laimbeer concurs. "I would make her aware of certain things, and she would go and take care of the issues."

As is now known, the Shock had a phenomenal season, compiling the best regular season record (25-9) in the WNBA. Cash also put up some good numbers, averaging 16.6 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game. For that, she was named a reserve at the All-Star Game and selected All-WNBA Second Team.

When it came time to face the defending champions, the Los Angeles Sparks, Cash also kept her focus on the team goal - winning.

"The media was trying to put on her that she had to score more," says Laimbeer. "To her credit, she said, no, she just had to continue to play a solid floor game. She did and almost had a triple-double (13 points, 12 rebounds and 9 assists in the final game). She didn't have to score 20 points. She had to play a great floor game because she has great teammates and she realizes that."

It's all about being a versatile individual.

She is spending the off-season working on her game. She played seven weeks in Samara, Russia. At Christmastime it was back home to McKeesport, where she is now the proud owner of her own home (bought last july). In the months ahead, she hopes to be doing some commentary work for ESPN and perhaps getting a chance to show off her glamorous side with some marketing opportunities. There will also be plenty of working out and practice.

Laimbeer hopes Cash will increase her percentage at the foul line as well as improve her midrange game. he and Cash are both in agreement that a repeat championship is the target for 2004.

"No team is defined by one championship," Cash says. "When you win two, that's when you start setting the foundation for many more to come."

There are also long-term personal goals that include working with kids and continuing to strive for personal excellence off the court.

"I want to touch a lot of lives around me that have nothing to do with basketball, but to use basketball as a tool to set things in motion I want to do later on in life," she says.

A perspective developed from being a member of a team.

"Being part of a team - whether it's in the workplace or whether it's on the court - teaches you to make sacrifices, be able to adapt, communicate with people and understand their backgrounds, needs and wants," she says. "You have to be able to give of yourself and be a selfless person in order to be on a team. It shows a lot of character and it builds a lot of character."

Copyright Ashton International Media, Inc. Feb 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved