Former Vandy standout Leslie enjoying return home Colonels

After spending close to two years at Louisiana-Monroe, Sumar Leslie was ready to come home.

When she got here, Nicholls State women’s basketball coach DoBee Plaisance was waiting for her with open arms.

In her first season with the Colonels, after two years in Monroe, the former Vandebilt Catholic standout is providing a big boost to the Colonels with her superb play and infectious personality.

“Sumar’s just a tremendous person,” Plaisance said. “I wish I had 15 Sumar’s on the team. She’s just a hard worker. She’s very intense. She comes in and she looks at game film on her own.”

After a storied career at Vandebilt Catholic, Leslie signed with the University of Louisiana-Monroe out of high school.

She saw playing time as a true freshman with the Lady Warhawks, averaging 6 points, two rebounds and two assists per game.

But despite the early success, Leslie said something just didn’t quite feel right in Monroe.

She stayed with the team initially for her sophomore season, but decided to leave the team after 18 games and seek a transfer.

“I wanted to give it a second year after my first year just to see how the flow of things would be,” Leslie said. “But I just didn’t like the style of coaching there.”

With Monroe out of the picture, Leslie headed south and back into the Tri-parish area, enrolling at Nicholls in the spring of 2010.

For her, it was about being home and closer to friends and family.

To Plaisance, it was about adding one of the best players in Louisiana to the Colonels’ program.

“Sumar just has that spark in her,” Plaisance said. “She has that game-maker ability and we’re just very blessed to have her.”

The blessing goes both ways, according to Leslie, who said she would have signed with Nicholls straight out of high school if Plaisance was the team’s coach.

“There’s no doubt,” Leslie said. “I’d have been here from the very beginning if Coach DoBee would have been here.”

Due to NCAA rules, she had to sit out the remainder of the 2009-10 season, as well as the opening half of this year.

“When you love basketball, you hate sitting,” Leslie said. “It was hard, but I’m just happy to get back into the rift of playing basketball and it’s coming along just fine.”

But back on the floor, Leslie has emerged as one of the Colonels’ team leaders, averaging 12 points per game.

Off the floor is where she just might have her biggest impact, though.

Leslie isn’t a doom and gloom prognosticator who thinks the sky is falling at all times during the day.

She instead lives life looking through a positive set of eyes n something that is sometimes needed with a youthful roster that isn’t winning quite as many games as they thought they might at the beginning of the season.

“Right now, we’re on a losing streak, but it’s going to take courage,” she said. “Coach DoBee always quotes this and I really like it. She says, ‘Courage is when you go from failure to failure, but you still don’t lose that enthusiasm.’ I really like that, so I just stick with it every step of the way. We just have to become a unit. A team that plays together truly does stay together and as long as we keep that and we work hard in practice, we’re going to pick it up.”

One of the players who has become inspired by Leslie’s personality is sophomore forward Alisha Allen, who rooms with Leslie on road trips.

She described her teammate as a constant ball of positive energy and said what she adds to the program is “not able to be measured.”

“She’s always positive,” Allen said. “When I go up to her, I’m like, ‘Sumar, something’s going wrong,’ and she’ll tell me, ‘Alisha, you can’t look back, you’ve got to look forward and you’ve got to look past it.’ She’s always saying positive things to me constantly and in the hotels, she’s always helping me stay on me feet. Sumar truly is the person on our team to go talk to, because she always has something positive to say.”

So with sparkling play and an even more sparkling smile, Leslie has helped the Colonels program in just a short span of time.

She’s happy to be home n and likewise, the Colonels are happy she now calls Thibodaux home, as well.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Plaisance said when asked if Leslie is happy at home. “And we’re happy to have her home.”

Nicholls State junior forward Sumar Leslie pushes the basketball up the floor during a game earlier this season. Leslie has inspired the Colonels with strong play and a positive mentality, immediately becoming one of the leaders of the team. NSU SPORTS