“That was on my birthday,” she said. “I think I was 5 or 6.”
Since that photo, a lot of things happened that stole that once easy smile.
For a while she lost her love of basketball, the sport where she was a three-time All-Ohio player at Sylvania Northview High School and a standout with the Ohio Elite AAU program coached by Dayton Flyers’ Hall of Famer Brooks Hall.
Although that got her multiple Division I scholarship offers, she ended up losing nearly a complete year of college eligibility when she abruptly left the St. Bonaventure program — after 5 games she’d played a total of 44 minutes, had five rebounds and scored three points — and transferred to Wright State in December of 2021.
For a while she lost who she was. The St Bonaventure experience — an ill fit from the start she said — was so traumatizing that, she said: “I started to become someone I was not.”
She said she began to lose the love of life that her dad, Jeremy Baumhower — a “big bear of a guy” as she described him — had instilled in her.
The worst loss of all though was the unexpected death of her 43-year-old father 4 ½ years ago after he went into the hospital for the flu, and it became pneumonia and then Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), which led to his organs shutting down.
He entered a Sylvania hospital in March of 2019 and 88 days later he died at Cleveland Clinic.
“I play with long sleeves on now, but here’s something,” Baumhower said as she sat in a secluded part of the Nutter Center Wednesday night following the Raiders’ come-from-behind 80-68 victory over Oakland.
In her street clothes now, she pulled up her left sleeve to reveal a date — “06-07-19″ — tattooed on the inside of her left arm, above her elbow.
“That’s his death date,” she said. “When my sister turns 18, she’ll get it, too.”
As she sat there, Baumhower picked up her phone to show another reminder of her dad.
“I have a playlist of all the songs he liked, and I listen to it a lot,” she said as she read off some of the titles:
“‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Doll; ‘Best of You’ by the Foo Fighters. There’s the Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex on Fire,’ Pearl Jam’s ‘Better Man,’ and the Killers ‘When You Were Young.’ And here’s Stevie Wonder’s ‘Signed, Sealed, and Delivered I’m Yours.’”
She grinned: and shook her head: “And he had this weird obsession with Khalid (the R&B artist.)
“You’d never picture that man mowing the lawn listening to that, but that was my dad.”
Although he was 6-foot-5, she said her basketball genes didn’t come from her father.
“My mom played in high school — she went to Sylvania Northview, too — and she played at Tri-State University. And my stepdad was pretty good too up in Dundee, (Mich.).
“My dad was a huge dude, a really good guy, just not real athletic. He was involved in radio talk shows, the media, but he supported my basketball.
“He’d rebound for me and in this gym, with like 10,000 seats, he’d be the loudest person at a game. And he taught me to cook. The Big Dude knew how to eat, and he definitely made good food.”
She talked about the spaghetti sauce he made from scratch that cooked all day long; his cheesy bread and a crock pot chicken meal he called “candied chicken.”
The thing she most remembers about her father — with whom she lived after her parents divorced — is the way he embraced other people and especially her and her younger sister:
“He was so loving. Anybody he came across, whether he knew them or not, he put his full effort and love out there.”
And that’s why everyone was so stunned by his death.
“He was admitted on March 13 and that’s the last verbal conversation I had with him,” she said. “He was put into an induced coma and when he woke up, he had a trach tube and couldn’t speak. They put him on this big turning thing to try to drain fluid from his lungs, but he just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”
Although this was several months before the COVID pandemic was announced, she said her dad’s decline “showed all the symptoms” of that devastating disease.
Before long she said her family was told her dad had just a 10 percent chance of surviving.
After he was Care flighted to the Cleveland Clinic, Baumhower — who was then 15 — missed much of the end of her sophomore year in school to be closer to her dad.
“You watched him go into the hospital for a routine thing and ended up seeing him waste away right in front of you,” she said quietly. “It was really tough.”
Although devasted when her father died, she said she had a strong support system that not only included her family, but her high school and AAU teammates as well as “the whole town of Sylvania.”
Finding the right fit at WSU
While basketball was a source of comfort then, it wasn’t when she started the sport as a fourth grader.
Her mom was the coach of the team, but Baumhower said she wasn’t very good and was more interested in soccer.
“My very first game is my best memory ever,” she said with a tongue-in-cheek laugh. “I didn’t know what I was doing and I subbed in and then immediately began crying because I didn’t know which way to go. I’m pretty sure I got a backcourt violation. I didn’t even stay out there two minutes and subbed myself out and cried the rest of the game. I wouldn’t go back in.”
In the years to come she began to embrace basketball. Although she’d become an elite soccer player, she gave up that sport before her sophomore year of high school.
She moved up the ladder of AAU teams: first one in the Toledo area, then Fort Wayne, and finally playing here for Hall at Ohio Elite.
“Twice a week my mom and I would drive 2 hours and 45 minutes to come here,” she said. “I knew if I wanted a Division I offer, I had to chase after them and Ohio Elite gave me more exposure.”
She starred in high school, as well — she scored 1,378 points — and got offers from several schools.
“It was during COVID, so you did everything over Zoom,” she said.
She accepted the St. Bonaventure offer without ever meeting the coaches, the players or stepping foot on campus.
She said it didn’t take her long to realize she’d made a mistake:
“It was the wrong fit. I didn’t bond with the girls.”
She said it took a mental and physical toll — “I didn’t even want to go to practice anymore,” — and she wanted to leave.
Initially she said her mom tried to buoy her, telling her it would get better:
“Basically, she was like, ‘Put your Big Girl pants on now.’ But soon I realized I was becoming someone I was not. And my phone calls to my mom got longer and she could tell something wasn’t right.”
After playing sparingly the first five games of the season, Baumhower was desperate to leave and entered the transfer portal.
Although schools were interested, most coaches had no midseason scholarship to offer.
When Wright State said it had a spot open, she jumped at it even though she’d lose a year of eligibility as she sat out the rest of the season to meet NCAA transfer rules.
And never mind that she was joining a Raiders team which, at the time, had a 1-8 record and had four games cancelled due to COVID. By season’s end the team would finish 4-23, with four of the losses coming by forfeit and seven games having been cancelled.
To Baumhower, it still felt better than St. Bonaventure.
She said she spent her first months here building herself back up emotionally and especially on the basketball court where she did a lot of extra work with assistant coach John Leonzo.
“I’m not the tallest player and I’m definitely not the fastest and I can’t jump,” she said with a laugh. “But I was going to make myself into the best basketball player I could. I was going to be aggressive and use my strength and, most of all, have fun again.”
Last season she played in all 32 games, started 24 and averaged 9.4 points per game.
This season she’s one of the Raiders’ leaders. She’s started all 23 games and is No. 2 in scoring (12.4), assists, free throw percentage and minutes played. She’s No. 3 in steals.
Slow start, strong finish
Wright State started slow Wednesday night and trailed 28-14 at the end of the first quarter.
That’s when Baumhower and fellow guard, Alexis Hutchison, took over. They combined for 17 points in the second quarter and the Raiders led 39-38 at the half.
Hutchison finished with 21 points and 10 rebounds and Baumhower had 18 points and six boards.
At 13-10, the Raiders already have won more games this season than they did the past two seasons combined.
As usual, Baumhower’s mom, Kelli, was here, as was her stepdad, Jeremy Snow, and her grandmother, Bridget McClain, who is quite a seamstress and had made her granddaughter a pair of colorful sweatpants affixed with all kinds of Wright State images and logos.
“Coming out of the situation I did, I can’t imagine being anywhere else now,” she said. “They not only prioritized me as a player here, but as a person.”
She said she’s better on the court than she was and, more importantly, she’s back to her old self off it:
“My dad truly cared about people, and I do, too. I learned from him. I’m a big lover. I want to commit to people and I feel like I can do that here.”
As she headed out of the Nutter Center on Wednesday night, she was wearing the sweatpants — her new Big Girl pants — her grandmother had made. In her right hand she carried her phone which held her dad’s playlist.
And with a little imagination, you could see she wore a tiara again, too.
Credit: Joseph R. Craven
Credit: Joseph R. Craven
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