NASHVILLE – Maddie Wright sat in a chair Monday in the Curb Events Center lobby on Belmont University’s campus, in nursing scrubs.
A name tag with “Leslie Wright” was dangling on the left pocket of her shirt.
“Leslie is my first name,” she noted, adding that “Maddie is more fitting. Leslie is too proper for a nurse.”
The 6-foot-1 Belmont senior forward from Chattanooga and Boyd Buchanan School missed Monday’s basketball practice to participate in nursing clinicals. She also is in her last academic semester.
“I started an I.V. today and a guy had just come on our floor,” Wright, who does her clinicals in the intensive care unit, told the Times Free Press. “He was a great person. A lot of people don’t like when students try new things on them, but he was just like, ‘I have a word for you; it’s tenacious. Just get in there and start it, and if you don’t find it, just start stabbing. You’ll find a vein eventually,’ and that just makes me think of the tournament. You can’t go into it shy. You can’t go into it thinking about what could go wrong; you have to be ready for everything that comes your way.”
Wednesday afternoon she will be in a basketball uniform as she attempts to help the second-seeded Bruins win the Ohio Valley Conference championship and advance to the NCAA tournament for the fifth consecutive season. Belmont (21-8, 16-2) starts the OVC tournament today against Austin Peay at 4 EST in Evansville, Indiana.
It’s been a perfect situation for her, as Belmont is one of relatively few NCAA Division I schools that allow athletes to pursue nursing degrees, due to the rigors of the program itself.
Wright has missed a total of three practices in her four-year college career.
Senior Maddie Wright from Chattanooga works against Jacksonville State in Belmont’s 61-49 OVC home win on Feb. 15. / Belmont photo/Sam SimpkinsSo which focus takes precedence?
“It’s hard to differentiate, especially because it’s the end of the season,” Wright said. “I think that with me being in my last year (of nursing), I’m definitely trading my nursing attire in for basketball right now. I was sitting in lunch today and thinking about the games we have this week and how every possession matters, so even when I miss practice, I’m thinking about practice and how I’m going to prepare myself.”
The daughter of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football coach Rusty Wright, Maddie is averaging 7.3 points and 6.0 rebounds a game this season while adding a team-leading 15 blocked shots. She’s played in 129 games in her Belmont career and started 61, averaging 6.3 points and 4.7 rebounds per game. That career includes 35 double-digit scoring games, six times with at least 10 rebounds and three double-doubles.
The finality of her career is rapidly approaching. At best, the Bruins play nine more games (three OVC, six NCAA), so she will be done in a month. She’s not ready to make any decisions as to what the next step is – whether basketball or nursing – as she is enjoying her time in both places.
But for a career that nearly never got off the ground, she’s been able to enjoy her experiences not just in school but on the court as well.
“Before we got to senior night, it started to hit me that we had only three weeks, six games left,” she said. “Nothing is guaranteed, but we’re also in the state of mind that it’s only not guaranteed unless we make it that way.
“Our mindset is that we can beat any team we go up against. It’s going to be incredibly difficult – we know that – but also the last three years, each year I’ve learned how hard it is to not only win a conference tournament but just win basketball games in college. Understanding I’m in my last clinicals, it’s hard to take care of people, it’s hard to make sure people are OK all the time.
“Understanding what we do isn’t easy is preparing me, not just for basketball, but clinicals, knowing that the things we do every day aren’t easy and they’re not guaranteed, and to be able to tell people in clinical, ‘Hey, I’m going to the conference tournament tomorrow,’ it’s cool.
“When I think about my career, I would just want somebody to think of me as a hard worker that puts this team above themselves, because that’s what our team has been about, regardless of coaching changes, regardless of anything. The culture of this team has always been we over me, and I think it’s something I would carry on not just in basketball but in nursing, too. It’s not going to be about me, it’s going to be about the patients I take care of, and I think that’s a good thing to have in life.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.