Weight loss makes world of difference to college ball player

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — As a junior college center, Danielle Adams was unstoppable. She punished opponents inside, took Jefferson College to the JUCO national title game in 2009 and won player of the year honors along the way.

Despite that success, very few Division I schools showed interest in her.

The reason, according to the Texas A&M star, was simple: her weight.

It's a touchy topic in women's basketball, one that's rarely talked about. For example, men's college basketball rosters list player weights, while women's rosters almost never do.

Adams? She loves to tell people about the 40 pounds she's lost and the success she's had since slimming down. The 6-foot-1 center, who weighed more than 280 pounds when she came to Texas A&M, has gone from being a good player on the fifth-ranked team in the nation to one of the top players in the country this year.

"I don't mind talking about it because I've been through so much," she said. "Just to lose it has been an honor to me."

While struggling to shed the weight and build endurance last season, she played just 23.4 minutes a game, but still averaged 16.3 points and was named the Big 12 newcomer of the year. Now she's playing almost 30 minutes and averaging a Big 12-best 23.3 points.

She's the only player to be named Big 12 player of the week four times, scored a school-record 40 points in a win over Kansas and was recently named to the Naismith midseason list of the top 30 women's basketball players in the nation.

She was always a punishing physical presence inside, but now that she can play longer she has improved on defense and has been a factor in A&M's transition game. Adams has been so dominant this season that Oklahoma State coach Kurt Budke said he considered limiting her to just 24 points against his team a "good night."

Texas A&M coach Gary Blair knows her weight loss has been one of the biggest factors in her improvement this season.

"I just think you're looking at one of the all-time best players to play here," he said.

Adams isn't sensitive about her weight, but admits that the lack of interest she received coming out of junior college stung a bit. She used it as motivation.

"Most people thought that I wasn't going to lose the weight or that I was too big to get up and down the floor," she said. "I just knew I had something to prove to everybody and A&M believed in me so I knew I had to give it my all. So that's what I did. I just wanted to prove to the country that I could lose the weight."

Adams lost weight in a healthy way, working with a nutritionist to develop an eating plan and the team's strength and conditioning coach to identify workouts best suited to her body type.

Blair is quick to point out that he didn't get involved in Adams' weight loss plan, leaving it to the nutritionist and strength and conditioning coach to emphasize the benefits of looking and feeling healthy.

"So generally I don't have to be the bad guy," he said.

Toni Torres-McGehee, an athletic trainer and professor at South Carolina who has done research on body image and eating disorders in athletes, said it's crucial that those who advise athletes about their weight have the proper qualifications and experience.

"You can't just go off weight," she said. "You have to look at their body composition. You have to look at a lot of other factors that tie into why they may or may not be gaining or losing the weight. You really need somebody with expertise to make ... healthy recommendations for any particular athlete."

South Carolina is working on a policy that says conversations about weight must go through the athletic trainer. Torres-McGehee said most of the department already follows that policy.

"Everything that we do and things that we recommend, we always do it for a health purpose or a medical purpose," she said. "We implement what is called a medical weight management program just so it doesn't lead to any more detrimental issues such as disordered eating or body dissatisfaction or depression or any of these other things for these athletes."

Texas Tech coach Kristy Curry said her program follows a similar policy. Curry said there are overweight players — and those who don't weigh enough.

"When you talk about weight, you're talking about players that maybe need to drop some weight, but we're just as concerned on the other end of things as far as making sure that our kids have enough fuel every day, enough nutrients, that they're doing things the right way," Curry said. "Just healthy, smart-eating habits and right sleep habits."

Arkansas coach Tom Collen said he leaves weight issues to a nutritionist, and is very careful about being sensitive when speaking to his players about anything related to weight.

"I think it's a touchy thing with women in particular," he said. "I think the day and age we live in right now, as a coach, you make the observations and then you present those things to your strength coach and to your nutritionist and you let them deal with them for that reason."

Blair doesn't see the omission of female basketball players' weights on rosters as a big deal.

"Maybe they need to put the color of their eyes or the color of their hair," he joked before getting serious. "We try to get our kids looking as attractive as they can going out there on the court and off the court. We want them to feel good about themselves."

That's exactly what the staff at Texas A&M did for Adams, who said the biggest factor in her weight loss was the approach everyone took.

"The coaches, my teammates, the nutritionist, it was just all a positive thing," she said. "Each day was positive because they knew how hard I was working and how effective it had been on me getting up and down the floor. When I first started until now it's always been positive. Nothing negative."

Adams is thankful for the help she received in slimming down because she believes it will help her succeed in her goal of playing in the WNBA. She's mostly played center at Texas A&M, but knows that she isn't tall enough to play that position professionally and a slimmer frame will make it easier for her to play forward at the next level.

That's why Adams is committed to the lifestyle change that helped her lose weight and believes she can keep it up.

"I plan on losing more weight and getting into better shape just because the WNBA is lot quicker than Division I," she said.

When she's done with her basketball career, Adams hopes to become a coach and has already thought about how she would handle a player who needed to lose weight.

"I would deal with it the same way I was dealt with here. I would just encourage them each day," she said. "I could show them how it was when I first got here to what I was at the end of the season. I would approach them the same way I was approached."