Women’s Basketball Captain Right on Schedule at MCC
The modest captain knows what has to be done and how to do it. She has her daily schedule planned out in a way which could rival any time-management expert.
Depending on the day, this itinerary includes receiving a ride to and from Manchester Community College for an ambitious class schedule and working in both the Admissions Office for Peter Harris and in the Minority Student Programs and International Students Office for Joe Mesquita. It includes receiving a ride to and from a women’s basketball practice or game at the college’s off-campus gymnasium at East Catholic High School. It includes interspersed studying and being a helpful and caring friend, big sister, daughter and teammate.
It is Laila (pronounced LIE-LUH) being Laila (Lemming Falkenberg).
The calendar has reached the beginning of March in Falkenberg’s sophomore season at MCC. Manchester Community College will play Gateway Community College in a National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Division III Region XXI Women’s Basketball Tournament semifinal game Saturday at 3 p.m. at The David M. Bartley Center on the campus of Holyoke (Mass.) Community College. The Cougars must win for Falkenberg’s junior college career to continue as the tournament uses a single-elimination format.
“You never remember the last two points you scored,” Falkenberg said. “You remember starting out as 10 and becoming a team.”
The 22-year-old Falkenberg has been a captain on the year-round club teams in her native Denmark, from the all-boys Orient team at age 15 to the Falcon and Oure teams. In 2003, she turned down a scholarship offer to a college in Michigan in order to remain close to her now 13-year-old sister, Natasja, and her mother Anni, and to be home for Christmas.
Falkenberg wanted to visit Africa in 2003 and instead spent seven weeks as a summer counselor at Camp Berger in Winchester Center, Conn., the northwest part of the state. (She ended up meeting her boyfriend Nate there, a counselor at the camp.) Soon after, she went back to Denmark to work two jobs, one cleaning houses for the elderly and the other in a grocery store, and returned to become an MCC student in the summer of 2004 with no intention of playing basketball. (The opportunity costs were free tuition, an obtainable bachelor’s degree in two-to-three years and a $500 monthly grant while in college if she remained in Denmark.)
“I didn’t even know MCC had a women’s basketball team,” Falkenberg said. “I actually missed the first team meeting… (Then) coach (Peter) Harris said not to worry about it.
“I was never good in school. Basketball was my way of being good. It seems weird now. I love it out there on the basketball court. I gave it up (in 2003) and never thought I would be out there again. Then all of a sudden you have a chance. You have to enjoy it.”
The 5-foot-4, blonde-haired sophomore guard, who has a 3.88 grade-point average in general studies, is on schedule to graduate with an associate’s degree this May. She is almost trilingual, speaking fluent Danish and English, and a respectable German. She no longer takes class notes in Danish. Yet, she still counts money and various inanimate objects in Danish.
The Cougars are 8-10 in 2005-06 and 19-19 since Falkenberg’s freshman season. She has appeared in 32 games – missing some to spend Christmas with her family and to work in Denmark – averaging 9.2 points and 7.0 rebounds per game.
There are no statistics or averages to compute leadership. Falkenberg has a reassuring and authoritative voice in the classroom, on the court, on the bench, in the locker room and on the bus . It is in the form of encouragement and communication. How to learn and study. Where to go on offense. What to do on a defensive switch. Where the defensive help is.
Said Falkenberg: “I hope others remember me as someone who worked hard and was a good friend. A good teammate.”
