Zakiyah Winfield’s basketball journey has taken her to unimaginable places

Zakiyah Winfield never imagined she’d win a national championship or earn All-American honors when she left Wilson four years ago.

She was simply looking for a place to keep playing basketball; it turns out destiny awaited her in a tiny West Virginia town that barely dots the map.

“I had no clue where Glenville was,” Winfield admitted Wednesday, less than a week after leading the Pioneers to their first NCAA Division II championship.

At first, Winfield didn’t know if her game fit in at Glenville State. In early practices before her freshman season she found herself on one of the side courts at the Waco Center, not out on the main floor with coach Kim Stephens and the top players.

“I wasn’t really looked at,” said Winfield, who found the college basketball world wasn’t clamoring for her services after a senior season which saw her average 16.8 points, earn All-Berks honors and finish with 1,144 career points.

Winfield worked her way into the Glenville starting lineup by the end of her freshman season, started 30 games and was second on the team in scoring at 17.2 points her sophomore season and led the team in scoring as a junior, in 2020-21.

The last two seasons ended badly for Winfield and the Pioneers. In 2020 they saw the season halted by COVID-19 just after they won the Mountain East Conference title and were about to play their NCAA Tournament opener.

Last season, one shortened by COVID, they made it to the NCAA Tournament but were stung in the first round by a buzzer-beater, losing to Tiffin University 85-83. That turned out to be the beginning of the Pioneers’ 2022 championship run.

“I was motivated by that,” said Winfield, a 5-7 do-it-all guard. “I said I want to win it all; nothing’s going to get in my way. A lot of people who lost that game, they came back (for this season) so they felt what I felt.

“I’m the leader, and I knew if I worked hard I could motivate them to keep pushing and be their best. And we were all just fueled by it.”

Winfield and the Pioneers had a near-perfect season. They averaged an incredible 95.5 points per game and won by an average of nearly 33 points.

She led the team in both scoring (18.1) and rebounds (7.1) and shot 57.1 percent from the field, among the top five players in the league. She was in the Top 10 in the conference in scoring, rebounding and assists.

On a relatively small team, with no 6-foot starters, Winfield found herself checking a lot of boxes and not fitting into any kind of traditional role.

“I wouldn’t label myself as anything, I feel I can do it all,” said Winfield, who’s home on spring break and stopped by the Reading Berks Basketball Association Winter Shindig Wednesday, where she was recognized. “I need to get downhill to the basket, and rebound. I just play to my strengths: I’m a defender, I can dribble, I can shoot, I can score any way.”

She earned all-conference and All-American honors despite averaging just 21 minutes per game. Stephens runs a five-in, five-out system, with mass substitutions and a lot of players seeing the floor. Eleven different players averaged 10 minutes or more a game; none averaged as many as 23 minutes.

Winfield had a couple of physical setbacks during the season. In November she broke her left wrist, missed a couple games, then played a couple weeks in a cast. In late January she suffered a concussion when she collided with a Glenville football player Stephens brought in as practice fodder. She missed a couple games, then was back on the court.

She was determined nothing would stop her or the Pioneers this season. Even a loss in the conference championship game to Charleston — a team Glenville had beaten by 23 and 11 points during the regular season — didn’t change the plan.

“I didn’t get too discouraged about it,” Winfield said of the 80-77 loss that ended Glenville’s 29-0 start. “If we didn’t lose (that game) we probably wouldn’t have won a national championship. It changed us around; we fixed things we needed to fix. It really bettered us.”

Glenville was barely challenged in the NCAA Tournament. It won its six games by an average of 25.6 points. None were closer than 12 points. It beat Western Washington 85-72 in the championship game in Birmingham, Ala., to finish 35-1. Winfield had 23 points and seven rebounds in the title game, helping the school win its first national championship in any sport.

“All the girls knew we were really good,” Winfield said, “but I wouldn’t say we knew we were that good to be crushing these teams and not really have that many close games. We didn’t expect that.”

For Winfield, most of this journey has been expected. She’ll graduate in May with a degree in biology. She plans to return for a fifth season (taking advantage of the extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA due to the pandemic) and will take graduate-level classes. Her goal is dental school.

“I didn’t know I was going to be winning championships and playing on a big stage and traveling everywhere,” she said. “I was just thankful for the opportunity to play at the college level, but none of that was ever imagined: All-American, things like that. I would have never (seen that coming).”