Walking, reading and watching plenty of Netflix and Hulu is how Semeka Randall Lay began her quarantine while recovering from surgery. She had something to look forward to though when she was named Interim Head Coach of the Winthrop University women’s basketball team in April.
Lay arrived at Winthrop to be the assistant coach for the women’s basketball team for the 2019-2020 season.
“It was a timing thing,” she said. “Coach Woodard had an opening on her staff. Basketball is my passion. Giving back to student athletes has always been something I wanted to do so this opportunity presented itself, and now I’m back in the head coaching [position] again.”
Lay said she is ready to “take the program back to where it once was.”
Bored playing house and dolls with the neighborhood girls, Lay’s basketball days began at the age of six when she picked up a ball to play “Around the Horn” with the neighborhood boys.
“We called it ‘Booty,’” she said. “You had to make the shot in all these spots. The loser happened to be me a lot of the time. You had to go put your hands on the pole and stick your butt out.
“Each person in the backyard had five opportunities to hit you with the basketball. Sometimes they hit you in the head, the neck, in the butt. They were supposed to hit you in the butt, which is why the game is called ‘Booty.’ I had to learn how to have thick skin, take it, and then just learn how to win,” Lay said.
Graduating from the University of Tennessee in 2001 with a BA in Speech Communications, Lay never predicted those early childhood afternoons playing on a court with no backboard would lead her to the WNBA.
“Back in my day, my rookie contract was like $38,000,”Lay said. “But if you think about it, you’re playing four months, it’s the first startup of the league, you’re just grateful to be there.”
She said that with only about 200 available spots in the WNBA at that time, it “felt great” to have the opportunity to play after being picked from millions of other women.
During her time in the WNBA from 2001 to 2004, Lay started 30 of 32 games as a rookie, averaging a career best of 9.4 points per game. Over three years she played for Seattle, Utah and San Antonio. In total, she played 123 games, starting in 55 of them and averaging 5.8 points per game.
Lay’s time in professional basketball provided experiences beyond the United States. Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, she traveled to Tel Aviv, Israel to participate in the Israeli Professional Basketball League.
“[It] might have been better than college sometimes because we were just so focused,” Lay said.
She started all 16 games at point guard, averaging 19 points per game. Her teammates were women from the U.S., Russia, Lithuania, Israel and Turkey, which she said presented “language barriers,” but there was always an interpreter or sometimes her teammates would interpret.
Lay said over time she “picked up words” and “learned how to fit in.” She said the biggest things she learned while traveling around the world were about “life” and “how to survive.”
“You grow up fast because you are by yourself and trying to fit in with their culture and understand what they like,” Lay said. “You learn to value that moment in that time and stop trying to rush things along.”
Beyond Israel, Lay traveled to play in Taipei Taiwan, China and Slovakia. She also visited Greece while playing in the Greek Professional Basketball League, where she started all 16 games as well. She was even able to do three Goodwill tours for American troops in Iraq.
In 2008, Lay was inducted into the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame, and she was inducted into the University of Tennessee Hall of Fame in 2011.
Lay has been coaching for approximately 15 years, beginning as the assistant coach and travel coordinator for Cleveland State. Throughout her career she has moved between eight different universities across the country, and this is her third time coaching an NCAA Division I team.
“It is a lot,” she said. “But that’s what this profession is. Sometimes you can sit and stay at a place for a very long time and sometimes there are opportunities that you cannot pass up on, so you say, ‘hey, I’m going to trust that vision and I’m going to dive right into it.’”
Lay said she met her husband, who is a professional golfer, while she was coaching in Ohio.
“One of the perks of moving around,” she said.
The couple’s careers keep them living in different states, but Lay said they constantly support each other — and their dog, Shadow — despite seeing each other only a couple times a month.
“At some point I would like to be in a place where I am not moving around alot,” Lay said. “I hope that this is the place here at Winthrop, because I see a lot of potential [in] what this program could offer a lot of potential student-athletes.”
Just as COVID-19 has shifted many people’s lives, Lay was left scrambling to find new student-athletes in two months to fill her roster and she said she was successful.
“We have four freshman, a grad transfer, and a junior college player,” she said. “It will be an emotional rollercoaster and we hope to keep everyone healthy.”
The lady Eagles finished 11-19 in the 2019-2020 season. After four months off, Lay and her team have their work cut out for them as everyone tries to get back in shape, both physically and mentally.
“It’s about changing culture and changing mentality,” she said. “For so long we’ve been taking a step back, and we need to keep building a program where we are all working together – where we all have one goal in mind, which is to get better each day.”
Lay said she hopes there will be a basketball season that allows fans to come out and watch the team grow. While there is still a lot of uncertainty about the season, she said she has great faith in her team.
“That’s one of the great things about sports,” Lay said. “Things are thrown at you and it causes you to be uncomfortable and you have to learn how to be comfortable in those situations. Just hang in there. Keep practicing. You want to be prepared for that moment – not allow everything around you to bog you down.”
