The Newport Plain Talk

NEWPORT-As a little girl, Shannon Depew fell in love with the game of basketball.

As a young woman, she fell in love with Carson-Newman College and its basketball program.

Depew signed a National Letter of Intent on Wednesday, the first day of the NCAA early signing period, to continue her playing career and education at the Jefferson City school.

"This is what I've been looking forward since I was a little girl," Depew said. "I've been going in the gym and shooting all the time and working as hard as I could so I could get a scholarship.

"This is what I've been working for my whole life," Depew said.

Depew's work ethic, demonstrated by her late hours of work at the Cocke County High School gymnasium with her mother Jackie on a nightly basis, was the bulk of the discussion surrounding the ceremony after Depew signed her scholarship papers.

"It's a great lesson for our other girls to see what hard work does," Cocke County Lady Red coach Wade Wester said. "This is what happens when you bust your butt, good things happen. I try to tell my daughter the same thing everyday, because if you work, then good things will happen.

"She's worked at it, because she hasn't been tall and she hasn't been the quickest player on the floor, but she was one of the hardest workers," Wester said. "You do that day in, day out, you will get rewarded."

After her time at the prep level and throughout the summer AAU circuits, Depew realized it would take hard work and effort to be able to get herself in the position to earn a scholarship offer from a major school.

"All the college coaches have told me if I keep playing hard and hustling then I could go anywhere," Depew said. "I always talked to my mom during the summers and ask her what am I going to do when I had in the gym every night and if I did not get a scholarship after working that hard.

"She told me I would get one and to keep working hard and you'll get what you want," Depew said.

Depew kept working and spent hours upon hours in the gymnasium, working to perfect her shot and her game.

The results showed as her statistical averages show. Her scoring average increased each year and her shooting percentage from the floor has raised nearly five percent since her freshman season. Her average from the free-throw line has increased nearly 10 percent in that same time span.

With the work ethic and corresponding results, along with the start of her junior season, the first full season college coaches can evaluate and make contact with prospects, she began to get the attention.

Walsh was one of those coaches whose attention was grabbed by the five-foot-10 Cocke County star, as he was at nearly one-third of the games of the Lady Red last season.

After talking to the coaching staff and the players in the program, Depew quickly found that the Lady Eagles program was a good fit for her and verbally committed to become one of the building blocks of the class of 2009-10 for Carson Newman.

"I went there this past spring to play ball and shoot around with the girls and they sold it," Depew said. "The coaches sold it too, they'd ask me how my day was and they seemed like they cared and wasn't there to just to recruit me.

"I love it so much there," Depew said. "Everybody sold it to me and I know that's where I wanted to be and where I would be happy at."

Depew plans to study nursing in her time at Carson Newman, which was another selling point for the school to its prized recruit.

"Miss (Sue) McBee, who is Skylar McBee's (University of Tennessee basketball player) mom and a nursing professor, sold it to me too," Depew said. "She told me it was possible if I put my heart into it and want to do it."

While the signing does signal Depew's final season in a Lady Red uniform is approaching, her coach was quick to point out that her high school career had one more year remaining, in which he expects much of the bulk of the team's activity to be centered around.

"She's not done playing for Cocke County," Wester said. "We've got dreams of going a long way and we hope we can put together something special around her."

He also noted that having a player the caliber of Depew pass through your program provides ample coaching opportunities for the future.

"It gives you a great lesson for the future, when I am coaching and I can say this what Shannon did, and that should click that means that is what a great player did," Wester said.

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