CNN
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Watching the footage of Baileigh Sinaman-Daniel’s history-making shot for Lesley University, the significance of the moment is clearly not lost on anyone.
Her teammates on the court fist pump the air. Those on the bench jump to their feet to celebrate. Coach Martin Rather sprints down the sideline to call a timeout to recognize what has just happened – Sinaman-Daniel has just become the first NCAA Division III women’s basketball player with one arm to score a field goal in a collegiate game.
There is one player, however, who doesn’t seem to pay it too much attention.
“I didn’t think much of it when it went in. I was just more so happy that it did and that I had to get back on defense!” said Sinaman-Daniel in an interview with CNN Sport.
“I didn’t even realize I had made history that night until after the fact, when I got a text from my coach and he said something along the lines of: ‘I’m so happy I was here to witness history,’” explained the 22-year-old.
“At first, I was kind of confused and I was like, ‘What do you mean, history? I thought I just made a shot.’ So it was definitely a bigger deal than I thought it was going to be!”
The road to that moment has been filled with even tougher setbacks than most aspiring college athletes have to deal with.
After three years on her high school team, the five-foot-six guard was cut – a particularly difficult moment given what the game meant to her.
“In that moment, I felt like I had lost a piece of myself because basketball was the only thing that really made me feel normal,” she explained. “Because when I’m on the court and I have the ball, nobody’s going to take it easy on me because they want to win the game just as bad as we do. So those moments kind of felt like they were being taken away from me, and I had no sense of normalcy.”
Having been born with a small right arm which she cannot use, Sinaman-Daniel has cherished the sport as a space where she is treated no differently from anyone else.
“I’ve always seen basketball since I started playing as a community or a group of people who look past the arm because – not necessarily that they don’t really have a choice – but, you know, if you tell your coach that you didn’t want to guard somebody with one arm because you didn’t think they will be able to make the shot, the coach isn’t really going to accept that answer because, at the end of the day, I am a player,” she said.
“I felt like I had lost a piece of myself because basketball was the only thing that really made me feel normal.”
Baileigh Sinaman-Daniel, Division III basketball player for Lesley University
“I put on a jersey, I do the warm-ups, I come to all the practices, and I play in some games. So it really made me feel like nobody was really looking at me as this one-armed basketball player. They just saw me as a basketball player, and just as capable of doing anything on the court as anybody else.”
But Sinaman-Daniel was not about to give up without a fight.
“After being upset about (being cut) for about a day or two, I simply told myself that, you know, ‘It (my basketball career) could be done for now, but it can’t be done in college,’” she said. “So I scrapped my whole plan of staying in state and going to a big school, and told myself to see if I could get recruited. So I sent my film out to as many coaches as I could.”
Her hopes were realized when she made the team at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, where she spent two years before moving to Lesley in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Recruiting Baileigh, it wasn’t any different than recruiting any other player that you want out of the transfer portal. This is someone who had played multiple seasons at the same level that we’ve been at,” Coach Rather – whose Lesley women’s squad won 11 games this season after winning just one the previous season – told CNN Sport.
“At the end of the day, my criteria was, is and will be, ‘Can this person help us get to the next level?’ And if you look at it, that’s exactly what this entire team did this year.”
Sinaman-Daniel’s success, she explained, has been partly fueled by a desire to show those who have doubted her that anything is possible.
“When it comes to negative comments, and people telling me that I can’t do something when I know that I can, the first thought that always comes to my head is, ‘Well, you have to prove them wrong now,’” she said.
“(I’ve been) betting on myself and betting that I was going to be able to do this and to prove my high school coach wrong and say that I was able to do this. That I was needed on some core, needed on some team, and that’s exactly what I’ve been able to do.”
Then came December 4 and the historic moment against Fitchburg State, when Sinaman-Daniel received a pass from teammate Ahidali DeHuelbes and, from just inside the three-point line, sent a shot swishing into the net.
“When the shot went in I thought, ‘Hey, we have to preserve this moment for as long as we possibly can,’” said Rather on his decision to call a timeout. “And that also allows the team to come out and embrace her, which they did, on the court, and gives us a second to reflect on the tremendous hard work and dedication it takes to get to that point.”
“The entire team was filled with joy,” recalled Sinaman-Daniel. “Mainly just because they have seen me overcome so many things throughout this season, and for it to finally pay off in that moment, in that game, it was a very big deal for everybody across the board. They were all screaming. They were all very happy. Everybody came to hug me.”
The story did not end there. Sinaman-Daniel claimed another two points on her birthday seven weeks later, before the team made the North Atlantic Conference (NAC) West playoffs for the first time in 14 years and claimed a 62-58 upset win over the No. 2 seed, VTSU Lyndon, in the quarterfinals on February 21. The victory was made even sweeter by the fact that Lesley had lost twice to VTSU during the regular season.
“It was a very fulfilling moment. I think the first thing that went into everybody’s head when we went into that game was: ‘We have to win.’ We would not be able to sleep right knowing that we lost to this team three times this season, so we had to do something, and it came off in that playoff game,” said Sinaman-Daniel.
“After that, we were filled with joy. We went into the locker room, and we sprayed our coach with water. It was a very big deal for all of us. And luckily, he had a second suit, so we didn’t need to worry too much!”
After a loss in the team’s first ever semifinal of the NAC West Division Championship against SUNY Cobleskill, Sinaman-Daniel is now looking forward to next season. She has, however, already accomplished her initial goal.
“I feel like I have done what I wanted to do when I came out here to play basketball. Even if it was one kid who saw me and thought to themselves, you know, ‘If she’s doing it, why can’t I?’” she said.
“I would love to be a role model for kids who feel like they don’t have a place in this world or feel like they’re so out of place – because I once felt like that as well.
“Being a role model, it means so much more to me that I think other people can see because, growing up, I didn’t have that role model to watch in the WNBA or the NBA or any college sport.”
Nowadays, young disabled athletes can look to the likes of Sinaman-Daniel and Austin Peay Governors guard Hansel Emmanuel as proof that they too can make it at a high level.
“Him being able to open the door for opportunities like this to happen for people who look like us is a very big deal for me,” Sinaman-Daniel said of Emmanuel, who lost his left arm in a childhood accident. “I will always give him props where it’s due because, if it was not for him, I probably would have thought that this was close to impossible to accomplish.”
We are getting closer, Sinaman-Daniel believes, to someone with her disability making it as far as the NBA or WNBA.
“I definitely feel like that is possible,” she said. “Hansel Emmanuel’s grit and his form and everything that he does is just absolutely amazing. And I feel like he could definitely end up taking this as far as going to the NBA.
“Though I would love to go to the WNBA, I don’t know if that’s where my mind is at right now. But you never know!”
Right now, though, Sinaman-Daniel is just enjoying playing the sport that she loves.
“I feel like next season will definitely be an interesting one because my confidence has just skyrocketed through the roof,” she smiled.
“If you tell me to dunk, I might try!”
