Reames aims to inspire fellow athletes with mural

In the downstairs hallway of the Centennial Center, the GCSU women’s basketball players get ready to face their opponents. The players exit the locker room and always pass by the same wall leading out to the main court. This wall is not like any other wall in the building, because this wall is covered in paint from top to bottom, in a mural created by senior art student, and basketball player, Antoinette Reames.

” I had to design a mural for my Painting 4 class last spring, and I had this idea of ‘athletes in motion,’ ” Reames said. “I talked with my coach and our athletic director and they approved it so I began working on the mural last May.”

For four hours a day, three days a week, she worked on the mural, finishing it in a month.

“I wanted the mural to motivate and inspire all athletes that walked by it. In basketball, you have those glory moments like dunking the ball, but you also have those times when you don’t succeed like you had hoped,” Reames said. “I was compelled to show both these emotions in the mural itself.”

The mural contains two images of real people, including Kool, a janitor at GCSU, and Jaiden, the oldest daughter of the GCSU assistant women’s basketball coach, Maurice Smith.

“Both Kool and Jaiden represent the No. 1 Bobcat fan at GCSU,” Reames said.

Her teammate, senior point guard Shandrea Moore, said that Reames’ mural shows her passion for the game.

“She has a unique artistic ability, she is always drawing something and bringing it into our locker room to show the team,” Moore said.

Reames grew up in Orlando, Fla., and began playing basketball at age 7.

“My mom played basketball in high school, and she taught me and my sister, Ashley, to play right handed, but I’m actually a natural lefty with the ball,” Reames said.

At age 11 she had discovered her passion for art and her desire to become an artist.

“I was sitting on a bus and this high school guy started drawing a picture of me,” Reames said. “He showed it to me when he was done and it inspired me to start drawing myself.”

Just a short time later, her life would drastically change, as she and her sister were placed into foster care. Her mother, Willete Reames, was struggling with a drug addiction and her father, Anthony Nixon, was never around.

“Our mom was in our lives, but never as the actual ‘mom’ role,” Reames said. “We forgave her and our father, and I still speak to them on a regular basis, but home for me was being with my sister and us making it on our own.”

The sisters, having only each other, hoped that they would not be separated in foster care. Fortunately, the sisters remained together and moved from family to family. The first foster home they stayed in was with 11 children all living under the same roof.

Eventually, the sisters moved in with an aunt who encouraged them to play basketball at the local community center over the summer. The following fall, Antoinette made the varsity high school basketball team as a freshman.

“Basketball became the one thing that I could focus on to get away from everything,” Reames said.

In eleventh grade, she and her sister went to live with Kathleen Newton. They had played basketball with Newton’s daughter, Anastasia, and Newton offered to take them into her home after learning about their foster care situation.

The day would finally arrive when the sisters had to separate for the first time.

Antoinette was offered a scholarship to play basketball at the University of North Florida (UNF) while her sister headed to Chicago to play basketball for Robert Morris University.

After playing two years at UNF and being red shirted her sophomore year due to a torn ACL, Reames found her way to GCSU.

“After recovering from my injury, I was replaced by another post player, and so I asked my coach to release me to play elsewhere,” Reames said.

GCSU head women’s basketball coach John Carrick was ready for Reames and seized the opportunity to bring her to Milledgeville to play.

“After the head coach at UNF agreed to release Antoinette, I brought her up on a visit the summer before last year and she was real interested. She went back and told her teammate, Shandrea Moore, about transferring to GCSU. It was great for me as a coach because I ended up picking up both a post player and a point guard! They came together to play that fall,” Carrick said. “Antoinette is a hardworking young lady and I am proud of her maturity as a college senior and even when she arrived as a junior.”

Reames sees herself living in Atlanta after graduation, working as a layout artist for a magazine as well as selling her own artwork. While her senior basketball season will come to an end, and her last semester of college will be over, she will have left behind her legacy, the mural, for future GCSU athletes to discover and to be inspired by.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Dec 4 2009. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry