For senior guard
Abyee Maracigan, the road to playing Division I basketball was an uphill battle plagued with injuries.
At the age of 14 and in just her first year of high school, she tore her ACL for the first time. That injury, however, made Maracigan focus more on basketball than she had before.
Growing up in Tucson, Ariz., Maracigan was a huge fan of the Arizona Wildcats women's basketball team. She saw her first live game at the age of five and was given a little hoop for her bedroom at that same age. From then on, she was hooked on the sport. Growing up, she also played soccer, softball, track and field and even petitioned her school to be able to play flag football. When she tore her ACL, Maracigan switched her focus primarily to basketball.
As she prepared to graduate, Maracigan had received a few offers to play college ball despite not being able to participate in travel ball during the summers as she was constantly recovering from injuries in the offseason. The one summer she was able to get out and play, she talked to several college coaches but there was only one coach she really wanted to play for.
Todd Holthaus was Maracigan's high school coach and was like a second father to her growing up. Her freshman year, Holthaus took an assistant coaching position at the University of Arizona. When he left, Maracigan made a promise to him that wherever he was coaching when she graduated, that's where she would go to school.
In 2007, Holthaus took the head coaching position at Pima Community College, a junior college in Tucson. Maracigan stayed true to her promise and helped Holthaus turn the Aztec program around. In her two seasons at Pima, the Aztecs won two regional championships and made two appearances at the national tournament, finishing third in 2009 and fifth in 2010. Over her two year career at Pima CC, Maracigan scored 768 points and tallied 448 rebounds.
With all her success in junior college, Maracigan was once again getting attention from Division I coaches and then she tore her ACL during the regional championship game. She tried to play at nationals with the injury but went down within the first three minutes of the game. Many coaches lost interest in her after that, except for ISU Head Coach
Seton Sobolewski.
“I didn't even start talking to coach 'Sobo' until after I had torn my ACL,” Maracigan said. “He actually did his home visit two days after I had gone into surgery. After that, I knew the kind of caliber of person he was to take me when everyone else had let me go.”
Maracigan used her redshirt season during her first year at Idaho State and took that time to heal from her injuries. She didn't even start classes at ISU until the second semester of the 2010-11 school year. Her first weeks in Pocatello were a bit of a transition for the Arizona native.
“It was the first time I had really experienced snow,” Maracigan said. “I had seen snow in the mountains in Arizona but had never had it fall on me before. I was crazy. I wore Converse sneakers on the first day of school and my feet were freezing. I was absolutely freezing walking around campus and had no idea how people lived in weather like that. I kept asking people how I was supposed to stay warm.”
During the 2011-12 season, Maracigan played in just 10 games and scored nine points with eight rebounds for the year.
This year, Maracigan has become one of ISU's top players off the bench, highlighted by her performance against Southern Utah on Jan. 10. The Bengals faced the Thunderbirds on the day of Maracigan's 23
rd birthday. Maracigan led ISU that night with a career-high 21 points and 10 rebounds for her first career double-double at Idaho State. A surprise birthday visit from her mom and sister made the moment that much sweeter for the 5-9 guard.
Off the court, Maracigan is an elementary education major who hopes to work with fourth grade students after she graduates. She plans on doing her student teaching here in Pocatello next fall and will graduate after that in December 2013.
“I just absolutely love kids,” Maracigan said. “Teachers play a big part in shaping kids when they are not with the parents and if I can make an impact in a kid's life it's a big deal.”
Maracigan is one of five seniors on the squad this year who will play their final home games at Reed Gym next week.
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