US WNBA star signs up with BSE-ESMA

By Eszter Balázs

FROM this season the women's basketball team of the BSE-ESMA sports club has been able to boast a big gun signing: Kedra Holland-Corn (pictured)from the US has been playing for the team for a few weeks now.

She was one of the keys to her old team, the Detroit Shock, winning the WNBA championship in 2003.

"It is a big change, I've never been to Central Europe," Holland-Corn, a 29-year old fragile looking but hard to beat guard told The Budapest Sun.

A native of Texas, she debuted in WNBA in the Sacramento Monarchs, then moved on the Detroit team, the underdog she helped off the bench to an unexpected victory against the Los Angeles Sparks in the 2003 season.

The season before the 1.73cm tall player came to Hungary she had played guard for the Houston Comets. She scored a season-high 21 points this June against Washington, and also threw five 3-pointers.

Europe is not totally unknown to the Holland-Corn: she has played in Faenza (Italy), Lugo (Spain), Aix-en-Provence (France) and Barcelona (Spain). "I would love to go back to play some more in Barcelona, possibly settle there for a while," she said. Instead of mellow Barcelona however, she finds herself in now mostly rainy and cold Budapest, a choice motivated by the player's private life.

"My husband found a job here with General Electric, so now finally we can be together. Actually being with him is what made up 90% of my choice of a club.

"This decision was not about money or competitions, it was more about me being with my family," she added.

Holland-Corn, who in 2003 ranked tenth and in 2001 third in WNBA 3-point field goal percentage, arrived in September at the Városmajor club, which has recorded a victory and a defeat since her arrival.

Although the BSE does not count among the best Hungarian women basketball teams (it ranks fifth in the Hungarian Women's Basketball League), the player does not complain about a decrease in the quality of the game.

"I have already played at the top and in medium-level teams as well - I do not care so much about the level now," she said.

Above all, Holland-Corn says, she wanted at all costs to come back to play in Europe, which she judges to be a more tranquil environment for players.

"In the US it is so stressful to play, with press engagements, advertisement shootings, promotions all the time," she explained.

"Here I am a little more relaxed, and can think more seriously about playing basketball."

After her year in Hungary, Kedra plans to continue in a more southern region. "I'd like to spend a year in Barcelona, maybe in Italy. And perhaps to have a kid as well, because in Europe it is possible to go back and continue playing afterwards," the new star of BSE added.

You can next see Holland-Corn and her BSE-ESMA team mates play at 6pm on Sunday, October 31 in the Városmajor basketball court, Buda, District XII, Városmajor utca 61.



HOLLAND-CORN is not the only American woman to find herself playing basketball in Hungary.

In September of this year, Maria Viall from University of Wisconsin came to play for Zalaegerszeg (ZTE).