ETC.
Saniya in Red
Wilmington’s NCAA Champion, Saniya Rivers
comes home to play for NC State.
BY AMANDA LISK
THE 2022-23 college
women’s basketball
season tips off in
October with 20 hours
of practice allowed per week per
NCAA guidelines leading up to
preseason games. At NC State,
a new story will unfold when
Wilmington’s Saniya Rivers makes
her first appearance with the
Wolfpack on Nov. 3 vs. UNC
Pembroke.
Rivers shocked her fans on April
14 when she announced she would
be entering her name into the
transfer portal less than two weeks
after winning the 2022 NCAA
championship with the University
of South Carolina Gamecocks.
“Everyone was calling me
crazy for leaving a championship
team,” Rivers said while on her
way back to Wilmington for a
weekend in July following a week
of conditioning at NC State. “It
really just wasn’t a good fit for me
personally.”
Rivers was ranked the No. 3
overall player in the country in the
class of 2021 by ESPN and named
a McDonald’s All-American as
well as USA Today and Gatorade
National Player of the Year after
her senior season at Ashley High
School.
She was one of the top players
of the Gamecocks’ heralded 2021
18 october 2022
WBM
recruiting class, but behind the
scenes she was struggling with
confidence. By the end of her
freshman campaign, she needed a
fresh start.
“We measure how she’s doing
by her smile and the joy she plays
the game with,” says Rivers’s mom,
Dee Dee Toon Rivers, who played
at UNC Wilmington. “When she
would get out on the court, some-times
we just didn’t see the joy we
were accustomed to seeing when
she played.”
“If your love of the game is
crumbling and you have a goal
of playing at the next level in the
WNBA, you have to make some
changes, I think it was a really
strong and brave move on her
part,” says her dad, Jimmy Rivers,
who played for Elon College and
Hoggard High School.
Once Rivers’s name hit the
transfer portal, her phone started
ringing. NC State coach Wes
Moore was one of the first to call.
“We recruited Saniya hard out
of high school,” Moore says. “I
think that’s where it works best
in the portal, when it’s someone
you’ve already built a relation-ship
with. It was really exciting
for her to decide to come back
home to NC State.”
Rivers, a 6’1” guard, is one of
three McDonald’s All-American
Sophomore Saniya Rivers began training with NC State
in the summer of 2022 after transferring from the
University of South Carolina.
ANDREW YATES/NC STATE ATHLETICS