Washington State’s Charlisse Leger-Walker represents her home country of New Zealand as rising collegiate basketball star

She already is living an ocean away from her home, but the world is opening up in many ways for Charlisse Leger-Walker.

From dreams of representing New Zealand in the Olympics and playing in the WNBA, to her current reality of being a NCAA Division I honorable mention All-American with a growing coaching academy back home, the future is bright for the Washington State women’s basketball star.

Her heart was heavy this past season as her grandmother fell ill and subsequently passed away, but despite missing four games it’s been full steam ahead more than a month after winning Most Outstanding Player at the Pac-12 Tournament. As she continues to become a household name in college basketball circles, she is riding out the wave along with her renowned mother and two talented sisters.

“I’m seeing how big of an opportunity it is,” Leger-Walker said last month, days after the Cougars won four games in five days to capture the Pac-12 title. “And if I can be in the limelight for that and show what’s possible, I think that’s important. Not only are they talking about me, but they are getting into how many Kiwis there are here playing college basketball and highlighting that now. It’s been opening up all these different conversations about what is actually happening in the U.S.”

Rugby is the national sport of New Zealand, but basketball is the fastest-growing sport for girls and women, Leger-Walker says. But the real competition in the country is netball, a female-only sport similar to basketball but played with teams of seven with no dribbling or backboards.

“Rugby is still the national sport, but netball is right up there and they get a lot of funding, too,” she says. “They make you choose at such a young age whether you want to do netball or basketball, and I loved netball too.

“Eventually they told me when I got to high school I had to decide which one, and I said, ‘Duhhh, basketball.’”

She said she and Ella Bradley, a fellow member of New Zealand age-group national basketball teams, once played both sports together in high school at St. Peters School Cambridge in their home country. Playing both sports in the same season raised eyebrows among organizers, and was disallowed after that.

“They didn’t love it, but we ended up winning the basketball nationals that year, and then a week later we went to netball nationals and won that as well,” Leger-Walker laughed. “We’re like, ‘Why don’t you let people play double sports more often?’”

It was a similar situation as when she was 12, and actually played in a New Zealand women’s league game in which her older sister, Krystal, and mother, Leanne Walker, were playing in. Her mom was the coach and was shorthanded, and Charlisse jumped at the chance to be an emergency sub. She hit a pair of 3-pointers in her minimal time on the court and then her mom sheepishly sat her back on the bench.

The next year, the minimum age in the league was set at 15.

She laughs now about the experience but scratches her head at the same time. “I had been playing, and now I have to wait for three years? It’s very interesting.”

Charlisse was 16 when she became the youngest player ever to join the New Zealand national team – nicknamed the Tall Ferns. Leanne was also a Tall Fern, and she helped New Zealand advance to play in the Olympics in 2000 and 2004.

Now, it’s Charlisse and Krystal’s turn to help guide New Zealand back to the Olympics for the first time since 2008, but it will be a difficult task.

“The Olympics have definitely been a goal ever since I was 16 and playing on the national team. My mum was a Tall Fern and went to the Olympics twice, so now Krystal and I are on the team. We want to get our team there, and obviously, it’s hard.”

New Zealand would have to get through an Asian qualifier to advance to the Olympics, and their foes would include the likes of Australia, China and Japan. “They are all powerhouse teams,” she says.

At this point, Leger-Walker plans on returning to New Zealand in the summer for qualification games and national team camps, “To get us prepared for that cycle that’s going to come up.”

But she has another pressing decision to make as she considers her prospects for making the WNBA. New Zealand has had just one player compete at that level in the country’s history, and that was Megan Compain, who played five games for Utah in 1997. She was a teammate of Leanne Walker on New Zealand’s 2000 and 2004 Olympic teams.

Leger-Walker became just the second player in WSU history to earn honorable mention All-America honors (the first, Jenni Ruff, came in the 1995-96 season), and coming back for a fourth season to build on her team and individual success has always been her intent. She has been coached the last three years at WSU by head coach Kamie Ethridge, and that duo have had past discussions about the WNBA, which holds its 2023 draft on Monday.

“Definitely it’s a big, big goal,” Leger-Walker said last month. “When I was being recruited, one of the priorities I told ‘Coach E’ was that I want to play professionally, and if I can make the WNBA or at least have a shot at it, I want to do that. This past year people have reached out to me, and I didn’t even know I was eligible to go into the draft this year.

“There are a lot of different things that go into that decision,” she continued. “The WNBA is so very hard to make, and the rosters are so small. Veterans stay around forever. Everything is so unpredictable. I’m in the space where I am deciding if I potentially want to pursue that and enter the draft after this year, or stay for my fourth year.”

Following a 74-63 loss to Florida Gulf Coast in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Leger-Walker closed her junior campaign with averages of 17.7 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game. She has started all 84 games she has played in her career at WSU, and has averaged 17.4 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists each time she has donned a Cougar uniform.

“Coming into college, four years was always the plan,” she said in early March. “There is a lot of room for me to still develop my game, and what better way to do that than at a collegiate level? You are still being seen and you have everything around you supporting you.”

She did hint at the postgame press conference after the FGCU loss that she would return to try for the fourth time to get the Cougars past the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

“Obviously, I’m very, very hungry to come back and help this team get past the first round,” she said. “The last three years we haven’t managed to do that, so that is something very personal for me that I want to help this team do.”

Regardless, her path to stardom has already paid dividends. Because Krystal played alongside Charlisse for WSU the previous two seasons, the Leger-Walker name has become well-known and their brand is growing.

The talk about the Olympics and WNBA doesn’t hurt.

“It does correlate back to that,” she says. “For me to possibly be on the pathway to do that, it’s already created so much buzz in New Zealand. I’ve been everywhere at home, and people are starting to realize how big college basketball is.

“I think it’s really cool that it’s been in the media so much, because for the growth of basketball it’s huge,” she added.

Portland, which beat Gonzaga for the West Coast Conference Tournament title to earn a NCAA Tournament berth, had three Kiwis on its roster (plus seven more from Australia). One of them, Emme Shearer, has been a teammate of Leger-Walker’s on various age-group national teams in New Zealand.

And Leger-Walker’s reach back in her country has been relayed to her via other Kiwis on other WSU sports teams.

“They were coming up to me and saying all their families had been watching our games. They would say, ‘That girl Charlisse from WSU is on the news and on the radio.’ I did a bunch of interviews with New Zealand media, and they have been reaching out to me.”

The Leger-Walker family has always had a presence at clinics and camps in New Zealand, which is roughly the size of the state of Washington. But now, they have a full-blown, family-run developmental program as a business.

It’s called “Basketball Secrets,” but really, it’s only a secret outside New Zealand.

“It’s pretty much a basketball academy, and we coach youth basketball from ages 4-18,” Charlisse explains. “Ever since I was 15 or so, I had been doing coaching on the side with younger kids. The more our family profile got bigger, people wanted to get coached by us and gain knowledge. It was more of a hobby than anything, then we realized we really wanted to help basketball grow in New Zealand. A big way we could do that was create an academy like this.”

The Sunday gatherings have now ballooned to three sessions of between 20-30 players in each session near their home in the Waikato region of Northern New Zealand. They also host mini-holiday camps, which have resulted in an influx of campers from throughout the nation.

“It’s mainly basketball development, and we try to get in as many kids as we can,” she said. “It’s our way to give back to the basketball community and help it continue to grow. The more we do, the more people know about it and want to come and learn.”However, the role of Charlisse is limited now because of playing collegiately. Likewise, Krystal is playing professionally in Australia and can’t be there very much. So, most of the coaching has fallen upon their mother, as well as their 16-year-old sister Tannika.

Tannika, a talented player with skills much like her sisters, has two years of high school left and is just starting the process to find a collegiate home to play basketball.

“Tannika is a really, really good coach, especially with the younger ones,” Charlisse said. “She’s very stern and has obviously learned from my mum, watching her for her entire life. She runs a lot of the academy on Sundays, which is cool for her for her own development.”

But until her own career is over, Charlisse will have to settle for being a coach on the court as she mans the important leadership role of point guard for the Cougars – and pseudo assistant coach.

“I think a big part of my role is to keep everybody else calm on the floor,” she said. “As point guard I play a decision-making spot on the floor, so you can’t be too emotional in those points in the game.”

But on the rare occurrences she isn’t in the game, she’ll be noticeable on the bench.

“When I’m on the sideline I just can’t sit down and chill out,” she says with a sly smile. “It’s just the natural instinct to tell people what they should do and remind them of things. At timeouts ‘Coach E’ will ask me what I’m seeing on the floor, so naturally I’m always thinking about what we should be doing. It’s a habit to stand up and still be very, very invested in what’s going on and stay focused on the game.”