Oak Parker Marché Smith became the first women’s basketball player in Concordia University-Chicago’s history to reach the 1,500-point level.
The senior guard achieved the feat on Dec. 17 in a game against Hope College in Holland, Mich. Smith entered the game against the undefeated, nationally-ranked Flying Dutch with 1,491 points. It took her just 10:47 to reach 1,500, her ninth point coming when she stole the ball and went in for a layup. Smith finished the game with a team-high 21 points on 8-for-13 shooting from the field (1-for-3 on three-pointers) and 4-for-4 from the free-throw line.
For her efforts, Smith was named to the All-Tournament team at Hope and was recognized as the Northern Athletics Conference Women’s Student-Athlete of the Week for Dec. 13-19.
Smith, who graduated from Trinity High School, scored her 1,000th-career point on Dec. 29, 2009 in just her 58th career game, the fastest among the seven women’s players to reach 1,000. She became the program’s all-time leading scorer back on Feb. 6, 2010 when she notched her 1,244th-career point in a game against Edgewood College.
Smith joins four men’s basketball players in Concordia’s 1,500-point club – Wayne Hesse (1,892), Peter Lark (1,819), Myron Schumacher (1,655) and Darron Lowe (1,596).
“It’s great to see Marché reach yet another milestone,” said Joshua Steffen, Concordia women’s basketball head coach. “She has raised the bar once again, and it will be exciting to see how high she will go over these next couple of months as she finishes her college career.”
Smith is averaging 21.4 points through eight games and ranked sixth nationally in scoring in the first NCAA III season rankings.
