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Reluctant Leader
Tavelyn James was comfortable as the women’s basketball team’s leading scorer. But being its leader? That took a bit more time.
F
or once, Tavelyn James didn’t feel like running. James, a senior guard, is the
fastest player on the Eastern Michigan women’s basketball team. Even coasting she could finish the 3-mile conditioning run ahead of her teammates and under the team’s target time of 24 minutes. But not all of the players
were so successful on one lazy July day; a half dozen or so didn’t make the cutoff, and this did not sit well with EMU coach AnnMarie Gilbert. James, a co-captain, got an earful about it. Two days later the team ran
again. This time James logged a personal-best 21:19, and everyone else made the team goal. “That’s when I realized when
you work hard and you pull the team, they follow,” she said. James is one of the most
dominant basketball players ever to step onto the court for EMU. On December 11 she broke former EMU guard Laurie Byrd’s career scoring record in a 38-point performance against the University of Michigan. In
8 Eastern | WINTER 2012
October, she became the first Mid-American Conference women’s basketball player to represent the United States in the Pan-American Games. The senior from Detroit (Mumford
High School by way of Mackenzie, which closed after her junior year) is averaging 22.4 points a game. But she’s only recently come to understand the difference
between being a leading scorer and being a leader. “I’ve actually grown a lot as a person (since I’ve been at Eastern), more than as a player,” James said. “Basketball for me is
Photographs by Randal Mascharka
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